Anyone know if DELL upgrade kits DVD key will work with retail DVDs?

[Byte]

Anyone know If I upgrade my Dell Vista (only 3 weeks old) to a clean install with a retail Win7 DVD, can I activate it later when my upgrade disk and key arrives?

 

[MrChad]

Unlikely. The Dell-supplied disk will likely require an OEM key.

 

[MStele]

Your new Windows 7 license will have a new key. Your old one stays with Vista. Even if the key was the same it wouldn't work. With Vista, the OEM and Retail discs were the same and thus the keys were compatible. You could use any disc as long as you had a key. With Windows 7, MS went back to the old practice of making keys incompatible with the disc type, so you need an oem key to install with an oem disc and a retail key to use a retail disc.

 

[RebateMonger]

Will the Dell DVD require a Key at all? Gernerally, brand-name OEM disks include code to recognize characters in the BIOS that indicate the motherboard is a Dell, HP, eMachine, etc and the included "Key" is never used.

But I don't know how these special Upgrade disks will work. Do they allow in-place upgrades, or do they require a "clean install" for the upgrade?

 

[pcgeek11]

Will the Dell DVD require a Key at all? Gernerally, brand-name OEM disks include code to recognize characters in the BIOS that indicate the motherboard is a Dell, HP, eMachine, etc and the included "Key" is never used.

But I don't know how these special Upgrade disks will work. Do they allow in-place upgrades, or do they require a "clean install" for the upgrade?

The Dell Upgrade OEM key will not work with Retail Disk...

When I received the Vista Upgrade disk from Dell it was not a Slp installation disk ( It did not have the $OEM$ folder at all ), but it was exactly an OEM Installation disk (system builder) as you could buy from Newegg etc with a Dell Label on it. Windows 7 may or may not be ...

pcgeek11

 

[RebateMonger]

The Dell Upgrade OEM key will not work with Retail Disk...
When I received the Vista Upgrade disk from Dell it was not a Slp installation disk ( It did not have the $OEM$ folder at all ), but it was exactly an OEM Installation disk (system builder) as you could buy from Newegg etc with a Dell Label on it. Windows 7 may or may not be ...pcgeek11

I have a Dell Vista Business Upgrade disk laying around, but I never used it or looked closely at what was inside.

I find the OEM Vista-to-Win7 Upgrade disk interesting because I always wondered if it would be something "special. If it was a "real" OEM disk, then it shouldn't allow an upgrade install and should only allow installing it to an empty partition. I couldn't figure how this would be acceptable to people who'd purchased a new PC three months ago and were now going going to lose all their installed applications.