I have win7 running now, but I was thinking of giving my parents this computer. So my question is - if I build a new system and buy a new OEM win7 disk and build it, if I decide sometime in the future to rebuild it again (i.e. new motherboard, cpu etc) will I be able to call Microsoft and get them to authorize it ? Thanks
edit - not using the previous stuff with the win7 oem disk I had installed.
An OEM licence is tied to the machine it is installed on. In other words, it can only be installed on one machine. If you are trying to reinstall the OS on the same machine, you should have no problems.
Ok, thats pretty much what I had interpreted from reading all these threads - now if the orig machine breaks and I replace it with the same type motherboard or processor will Microsoft authorize that ?
What do you mean by break? If the machine detects enough change, it will prompt for reactivation. That is to prevent people from taking a hard drive and sticking it in a new computer to avoid having to buy a new license. Upgrade one piece at a time, and you should be good.
Thanks Jonathan King for all the help!
That's the gray area, and despite how many times this gets asked on these types of forums, no one gets any closer to a concrete answer. There's no clear definition as to what defines a "new computer" when you are talking about enthusiast-built systems. That being said, if you need to call in the activation, you can simply tell microsoft that it is the same computer, you just replaced a hard drive, etc. Whether or not this violtes the EULA...well that's a debate for another day.
Thanks DeaconFrost, I think I now get the gest of what everyone's saying.
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