Windows 7: os on 2 pcs

i have just upgraded from xp to win 7 home premium and was wondering if the liscence will let me put the operating system on an aging laptop that will be for my daughter to use.the laptop still runs xp but from what i have seen so far it would benifit running on windows 7. would be nice not to have to pay again.

cheers shane

Welcome!
Nope, one install per license. You could call Microsoft and have them deactivate your current laptop, then you could put it on another one.

may have miss read what you said but win 7 on my desktop not laptop .but why would you deactivate it to put on a laptop?

cheers shane

Hi Shane,
I must have misunderstood. The license can only be used on one computer at a time. If you want to put the OS on a second machine, you first need to call Microsoft, so they can deactivate the first machine.
~Jonathan

just out of interest as i have now gone from xp to win 7 home is my old os automatically deactivated?
as the old laptop was given to me by a mate , i wanted to do a clean re install but he did not hav the disc .
so in effect i now have a os disc from my desktop pc that i could do a clean install or have i got to still ring up ?

my mrs just had a new laptop and that had no os disc with it but tells you to make a back up in case something happens in future . is this new practice? as every pc i had before always sent with os disc.

cheers shane

It entirely depends on the type of license. Bear with me, and I will try to summarize.

Upgrade license: can be used unlimited times, provided it is never on 2 machines at the same time.

Eligibility: must have existing OS first.

OEM license: Tied to one machine. Legally, you cannot use it on any machine other than the one it was originally installed on.

Eligibility: The machine it is installed on must be sold to someone else

Full Retail license: can be used on any machine, activated unlimited times. It cannot be used on 2 machines at the same time.

Eligibility: no stipulations

Hope this helps.

yes most OEM's have been doing this since Vista, its actually a good thing, (providing your hard drive doesnt fail) as it should have recovery partition which will allow you to recover it much quicker than if you did it by disk, but make those backups just in case! my OEM partition went south after 1 reinstall on Vista

They've been doing it even before Vista, The XP that came with the desktop in my specs was on a recovery partition, no disks.

I'm not sure it is a good thing.

I would rather have a proper install disc than some oem partition/recovery disc riddled with unwantedware.

I would never buy a pc unless I had the proper install media.

well while i agree with you about the crapware, even back when i bought a laptop with XP, the Windows disk i got with it, also installed the crapware, so to me, it makes no difference, thats why i like my nice shiny new windows 7 installation, its crapware free, as its just the Windows 7 disk and thats it

ah my mistake, first time i saw it was on vista, didnt realise they were doing it for XP too