Windows 7: Selling my retail licence question.

Hi all,

When the Windows 7 RTM was due to market as you all know there were special price incentives.

I bought a licence of home premium and also of pro.

My cousin is building his forst windows PC, and I would like to sell him my copy of HP for the proce I paid for it, and install PRO onto my own machine.

Is there any issue with the EULA in respect to this, or do I need to notify MS about any change of ownership?

many thanks in advance

Did you ring and tell MS you bought it, as I'm guessing no, then that is also you're answer.

Hello saverio.


The fact that needs to be remembered is that 1 license key = 1 machine.

Except OEM keys as they are tied to the first mobo they are installed on.

So if you've already installed HP on your machine, and it's the OEM version, then there's not a great deal you can do, if however you bought RTM versions, you should be good to go, but your cousin may have to activate by phone if an issue occurs.

thanks guys,

I haven't given him the operating system yet, so I will ring Microsoft in the morning.

Both the flavours of 7 which I bought were full proper commercial retail copies not upgrades / enterprise bulk purchase etc.

I just saw it as a way of saving him the price of a full copy for 95 pounds when I paid 45 for mine.

Either way, many thanks for your input, and i'll post back when I hear what Microsoft have to say on the matter.

I wouldn't speak with MS before I tried the install.


Yes, please keep us informed.

If ti is RETAIL, I don't see that there would be any problem with it. As long as it is installed on only one System,, it doesn't matter which system that is. You should be fine with selling it, even if you had used it previously. So long as you wipe it from the old pc.

OEM, as stated, is tied to the system it is activated on first.

Tepid, that's exactly the intent, I was going to wipe it from my machine, install pro on mine, and then part company with home premium.

I'll take barefootkid's advice and wait till it's all done before ringing them.

My only concern was really how they would view a different name registering as the owner of the product.

Why, when there is no legal obligation for you to do so? If you didn't ring them to tell them you'd bought two copies, (as I'm pretty sure the majority of people wouldn't have even when they just bought one) why bother now.

My laptop came with Vista, but the thought never even entered my mind to ring Sony or Microsoft to tell them I was changing my OS to Windows 7, and it won't when I come to sell my laptop.

But, that's just my opinion.

Because who enters that info anyway? I don't, never have. Never will. No Reason to.
You can skip it.