How does windows upgrade licenses work?

[darkxshade]

If you had owned a copy of XP Full(not OEM) and bought the Win Vista/7 upgrade, do you now essentially own a copy of Win 7 full or does it become a sort of OEM license effectively locking it to the PC, or that you can't upgrade from an upgrade?

The idea here is if it's possible to effectively own a full license which is transferrable to any 1 pc through applying upgrades to the original key for as long as you buy the upgrade from OS to OS?

Common sense is telling me no(that an upgrade cannot be upgraded again) since it seems a bit ridiculous to think that someone could have gone from say 95 to 98 to XP to Vista/7 and then to Win 8. However, now that MS is planning on releasing new OS's roughly every 2-3 years, I was thinking if it was feasible to buy Win 7 Full as you near the release date of Win 8 considering the price of a full license does not drop despite the life of the product coming to an end and that Win 9 is possibly just another 3 years away effectively nullifying the usefulness of having a full copy that you planned on using on your next build 4-5 years out.

 

[Diogenes2]

What is Win Vista/7 ?



As far as I know you can apply an upgrade to an upgrade..

I installed a Vista upgrade and then upgraded to Win7..

 

[Nothinman]

AFAIK upgrade licenses aren't tied to any hardware. Although if the previous license used for the upgrade were OEM, that license would be so you would effectively only be able to upgrade that PC unless the PC you were transferring the upgrade license to also had it's own license to satisfy the upgrade requirements.

 

[stargazr]

Yes you can keep upgrading from machine to machine. You get what you pay for though. Windows upgrade discs have the "full" version and are capable of creating partitions, formatting - clean install. It used to be that when upgrading you could start with a clean drive, start the install, it would prompt you early on for the disc from the previous version(Win 2000) - to verify you have an existing copy. All you had to do was put in the disc in, and a few seconds later switch back to the new install disc(XP).

Now beginning with Windows 7 upgrade, you must load the entire XP OS before the Win 7 install will begin. As long as you reboot with the DVD you will be given the option to do a clean install. If you run it from within the OS it will install over XP and leave the old files on C.

So assuming Windows 8 upgrade discs work the same, you will have to load Win 7 first before starting the Win 8 install.

 

[iluvdeal]

.Now beginning with Windows 7 upgrade, you must load the entire XP OS before the Win 7 install will begin. As long as you reboot with the DVD you will be given the option to do a clean install. If you run it from within the OS it will install over XP and leave the old files on C.

So assuming Windows 8 upgrade discs work the same, you will have to load Win 7 first before starting the Win 8 install.

I gotta believe someone found a workaround for that... Seems like an awful amount of work if you ever had to reinstall Windows 7 after the initial install.

 

[mikeyes]

Yes you can get around doing the full XP install before using the Win 7 upgrade media.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/...t-key-on-formatted-or-empty-blank-hard-drive/

 

[Diogenes2]

from your link:

During installation, when prompted for a product key, DO NOT enter the upgrade version product key.

I was able to do a clean install with Vista upgrade by following this step, but when I upgraded to Win7, it would not let you skip entering the product key, and with a clean HDD, Win7 would not accept the key ..

 

[biostud]

I think the upgrade version "key" checks for a previous installation of windows, either an installation disc or an installation on any partition on the computer.

 

[Diogenes2]

Apparently, but with Vista, it gives you the option to not enter the key at the beginning of the install process.

 

[darkxshade]

Ok so I'm not sure if I got a definitive answer here. Lemme put it this way:

-Lets say I have a full retail copy of Win XP and win 7 upgrade installed on a pc.

-Say next year, Win 8 is released. Will a copy of win 8 upgrade work?

-What if I decided to uninstall(release my cd keys) from my pc and instead buy Win 8 upgrade and install Win 8 on a new PC by way of XP --> Win 7 upgrade --> Win 8 upgrade? Could I do it without having to start with an XP installation? What about Win 9(XP->7->8->9)? Where does it end? Does it end at all?

 

[biostud]

If you want install win8 upgrade on a new computer and have winxp retail you just go winXp->win 8 and skip the win7 step. You should be able to upgrade from win7 to win8 on your current computer.

 

[stargazr]

-Lets say I have a full retail copy of Win XP and win 7 upgrade installed on a pc. -Say next year, Win 8 is released. Will a copy of win 8 upgrade work?

Well really then you would just have Windows 7 installed. XP is gone. But yes that's why it's called an upgrade. How they handle detecting the previous version with Windows 8 is unknown but I'd imagine it will at least be the same as Windows 7.

-What if I decided to uninstall(release my cd keys) from my pc and instead buy Win 8 upgrade and install Win 8 on a new PC by way of XP --> Win 7 upgrade --> Win 8 upgrade? Could I do it without having to start with an XP installation?

No because you have to start over. You would be better off leaving the existing OS on to save a step, most likely it would be the previous version. That's one of the drawbacks to continually buying upgrade discs. It wouldn't be a big deal if Windows wouldn't have made it harder by going through the whole install of the previous version. Having said that, there are hacks around this of course. Post #6 has some info.

Don't be confused with the product key. When I installed Windows 7 with an upgrade disc on a new drive, I installed XP from a full version disc to the point where Windows asks you some questions before it finishes. I did not activate it with the key code and Windows 7 disc worked fine from then on. Just remember to set the DVD drive to boot first and reboot to begin, and choose clean install and you can format the drive.