Clean install with Upgrade version..

ojustaboo said:

Just reinstalled windows 7, clean install and formatted the Vista partition from within the setup.

All worked 100% fine.

Did you do this with the upgrade .exe? Or an actual disk?

Elpants said:

ojustaboo said:

Just reinstalled windows 7, clean install and formatted the Vista partition from within the setup.

All worked 100% fine.

Did you do this with the upgrade .exe? Or an actual disk?

Disk created from Digital river download.

Zidane24 said:

apollo911 said:

This is ridiculous - there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer.

Microsoft are going to get another kicking if people go out and buy a full retail and then discover they had no need to.

And what is the difference between the 'upgrade' and an OEM then?

Big difference...

With an OEM copy, that licence is tied to ONE COMPUTER. This means, for instance, that if you uninstall the OEM licence from one machine and then try to install and activate it on another it won't.

To summarize:
Upgrade editions can be installed as many times as you want and re-activated as long as it is only activated to one machine at a time

OEM editions can only be used on the computer that was activated on them first...any subsequent activations must be used on the same machine that it was activated on prior

I had read on MS Technet forums that Upgrades are tied to the upgraded OS license and must be paired with it on any migration, so that if you have an OEM it can't migrate since tied to hardware, but if you use retail for the upgraded OS then it and the Upgrade are portable to migrate to another machine as long as it is only one at a time.

When I asked the MVP's how this is enforced since the upgraded OS is not deactivated or linked to the upgrade, they told me that it is not but is only binding in the EULA, that you can in actuality move an Upgrade anywhere you want as long as it is one machine at a time.

Just to be safe, I pulled out my retail XP to put on my laptop to use with the Upgrade disk so it would be portable for life, but when it arrived it clean installed to formatted HDD, so I didn't need it. So much for Technet's EULese.

Now Technet is insisting that these clean installs are against the EULA and could later be caught up with by WGA.

Who has time for all this? (Technet)

dmb219 said:

I have a WD Caviar Black drive I installed a few weeks ago. I have an install of RTM Home Premium on it (modded iso). The disk has never had an activated version of Windows on it. I just got my upgrade disks from Newegg off my front porch. I put the code in and it activated. I'm going to reinstall anyway, but that was pretty easy contrary to what some said.

More evidence these are full retail keys shipped with Upgrades.