Which disc to buy?

I just know with paypal you have recourse to get a refund and if you ship something fraudulently through the USPS it become mail fraud a much bigger deal than if its sent fedex.

Datman said:

I am upgrading my Vista 32 OS to W764. I was going to upgrade to W8 butdecided to go with W7. I installed it and am running the machine unactivated. Iwant to be able to buy the disc and just use that key to activate, noreinstall.

Good luck on doing this with your already installed W764 without any need to reinstall.

Whatever installation DVD you did your still unactivated install from, if it's not a retail version of Windows waiting for a retail version of a license key, I don't think you're going to be able to reinstall the true retail version of Windows from your newly acquired retail installation DVD with its accompanying retail license key. I don't think you can just use the retail license key from your newly acquired installation DVD to activate ANY OLD CURRENTLY UNACTIVATED WINDOWS currently installed.

I believe the installation DVD contents, and the resulting installed Windows, is what is tied to the license key. If you have an OEM installation DVD it cannot be used for a retail license key, and vice versa. OEM means one machine only. Retail means one machine at a time, but if you upgrade hardware you can uninstall from the current machine (to deactivate that license key) and reinstall to the new machine (activating with the same single retail license key).

So, you didn't reveal where you'd acquired the installation DVD your currently unactivated install came from, which you really don't want to have to reinstall if you can avoid it. But unless that was a retail installation DVD, you're not going to be able to use a newly found retail license key (from a newly purchased retail installation DVD for the same Windows type as your earlier installation was done from).

That's my thinking.