Hey,
I live in Korea and I'm about to upgrade my laptop and I am wondering if I can do a fresh install of English Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit using my new laptop's Korean licence?
I have an English Home Premium 64bit DVD here, so I can just format and reinstall in English, but will my licence work?
What do you mean by upgrade ? Are you having an issue ?
Hello Pyrexea Welcome the Seven Forums!
I highly doubt the Korean product key would work since that was intended for a non English release. Instead you would generally go through the optional Windows Updates for the various language packs choosing the one for English to see downloaded and installed.
The best reference on this can be read at the MS page. Available Language Packs
Upgrade as in getting a new laptop as my current one is around 2-3years old and overheats running basically anything...
As for the LIP's I need to upgrade to Ultimate, right?
You bought a 7 Home Premium English version disk correct? That will be used to replace the OEM Preinstalled Korean version where the new disk's own product key would be used.
For the Ultimate you would need to buy a totally separate disk for that edition which would have it's own key for that edition. The OEM key would only work if you were using a Korean Home Premium disk to replace the OEM preinstall with the exact same thing only with another Korean release of the same edition.
The product keys for the Home Premium are totally separate from the other 7 editions. To replace the OEM preinstall now with the Ultimate edition even if it was a Korean release would require the Ultimate series product key.
I got the home premium as part of a deal when I bought old laptop. It didn't come with OEM for some reason and they have me a retail box of Home Premium with the PC. Also, I should have said that the English Home Premium's licence is already in use on my current laptop. So I'm guessing I can't use it for the new laptop?
One machine per license except when purchasing a volume license. Small business licenses can allow 10 pcs or more depending on the catagory you buy. If you were replacing an old laptop with a new one with the retail disk you could see the license transferred over to the newer machine voiding out the previous older machine's installation there.
If you were intend on buying the Ultimate edition then you would transfer the Home Premium over to the old machine likely when calling into MS and run a clean install of Ultimate on the newer laptop to be the OS installed there. Or for seeing another Home Premium install the lower cost would be going for a second 7 upgrade disk and following the guide for this seen at Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version
Pyrexea, looking online, I see some people that say that they successfully activated the English version of Windows 7, using keys that came with different language versions of Windows. For example, this case, where the OP activated an English copy using a French key. I also see a few cases where people say they were unsuccessful, but I didn't see where any of them stated whether they tried phone activation or not. Since the computer has an OEM key you will likely have to call MS to activate by phone anyways. I've done it before and it was a fairly simple process. Just tell the automated voice the product key and rather or not you've used the key on another computer and they will give you an override code to activate Windows.
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