OEM Windows 7 Home Premium x64 act on 1 PC, use for old x32 vista too?

Hey all

These forums are gnarly in-depth. Love it. Anyway, I have the OEM win 7 x64 on this (my main) comp, and have my old Acer notebook just sitting there with nothing on it except the basic Vista Home Premium x32 on it. I finally just left the thing blank after I did the fifth or sixth Vista crash start all over technique so many times, and just went new with everything. So right after I finished the excitement of seeing the "Preparing Your Desktop"
screen on this comp. I thought, "I'd like to just put it on my other one too." Right? After a bunch of browsing into ten thousand forums, and guides or what not, I still have no true fact that one cannot do it with the same key. It's all a bunch of "yeah you can," or "no way." arguments. Maybe one solid answer on the whole forum. And what if I just dual boot it, and if 7 won't activate, just go back to blankity blank Vista. I had the beta 7 on there too before I wiped it clean this last time. It'd be worth giving away with windows 7 on it. I know computers inside-out. Enough to know it's stupid to just do something, and suffer the result. Further more, My question is, can or can't you
somehow use the 64bit OEM disc and key on one comp, and then use it on your other 32bit, with athlon II x64 CPU, PC? Or does anyone really have a clue...lol?

Thanks, Johnny B

You can not use a Lenovo OEM disc on an Acer computer as it is tied to the computer that it was originally installed on... During installation, it will query the BIOS and will know it is a different BIOS than the one it was designed for, and fail to continue... You will need to get a different version of Windows 7 .... Hope this helps.

Short answer-No
Long answer-No

I'm not sure where you saw otherwise, but you can only install each Win7 license on one computer at a time.

If you have already activated Win7 on one set of hardware and install it to another, you will be asked in a robocall how many machines it is installed on. The only answer accepted is One, at which time it will activate Win7, update the new hardware signature in MS Activation computers, and the old install will be deactivated as soon as you connect to the internet.

I would clean install Vista from DVD, not recovery disks, to get it lean with no bloatware. Get any missing drivers from Support Downloads webpage for the Computer model. Use MSE for Anti virus, only allow MSE and gadgets into msconfig>Startup, CCLeaner/Auslogics Defragger monthly and it will run fine.

No, no, I bought the OEM win 7 from ebay. Vista 64 came on the lenova. I wiped everything off vista of it before I installed the win 7 OEM on it. In any case. Obviously one of any "OEM" version of windows (7, vista..) purchase, buys you one install. I got that. But it's always nice to have high hopes, knowing it aint going down that way. Thanks for the one last kick to the head though. I hate to meat defeat with computers. Almost everything has a way around it. Except Microsoft's nuke-proof OS's...Thanks for sure.

I'm still not sure what you are asking, and maybe that is why you can't find a definitive answer.

Can you use the same key on two systems, one x64 and one x86? No. One key, one computer.
Can you use the media to do the install on both with separate keys? Possibly no, because some OEM discs are BIOS-locked. I don't know why people stick with these BIOS locked discs, to be honest. I'd prefer to get a plain vanilla disc that I could use with any key or license type.

If neither of those answers are what you are looking for, post back.

There are reports that MS phone activation agents will sometimes make exceptions when given a good reason (e.g. wrong machine) to move Win7 OEM to other hardware.

And you can always switch back and forth between 32 and 64 bit as often as you want.

Yeah yeah lol I got it. Dumb question to ask anyhow. Thanks man. I'm loving Win 7. Miracles from Vista. Also do you
know if the tweak for stopping Vista from needing to reboot after every update, with the regedit "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows" Then Create new KEY under windows called "WindowsUpdate," and under WindowsUpdate another KEY called "AU." With AU selected make a new DWORD called "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers" and setting the value to 1 Works with 7 too?

I've never heard of that reg change, but sounds cool.

It sounds like you purchased a used 7 disc online that didn't come with a key for it. You might be able to get just the key without paying full price by claiming you lost the original (pure speculation).

No It's all up and already activated on this comp. The OEM's I think are the way to go if it's just your own one comp you're putting it on. I paid $100 on ebay. It's supposed to be put onto a retail store's computers, and then sold. Allowing the buyer to activate it, or the Seller before hand. That's what I think is right. Except Microsoft will never know who is actully selling it or just using it themselves. As far as I'm concerned, I bought and sold Win 7 to myself. lol.

From what we are seeing, it is NOT safe to buy Win7 on eBay. I hope you used their most Trusted Seller and PayPal.

Check here first: http://d-fault.nl/pidcheck/ If in question, you can validate your key by calling MS Customer service to find out for sure, hopefully in time to get your money back if necessary.

Irony is that you paid about what fully legit retail outlets like buy.com and NewEgg want for OEM.

Do yourself a favor and do not tweak Win7. Many of us who beta tested it for more than a year learned the hard way that it needs no tweaking beyond normal settings.

Where did you get that OEM disc?

the computer I bought and installed the OEM on, my lenova. I already Activated it about a week ago from the OEM key. So I must have been lucky with ebay. I do only use top sellers and paypal. but like you said. if you haven't got it from ebay yet, don't. Also I'll note that my Lenova that i use daily, had vista on it too before windows 7. but I wiped it super clean before I used the OEM because I heard somewhere, if you try and do a dual boot from an OEM, it'll then know that it is not a new computer, and you aren't a retailer. So that's my theory on how it worked perfect for me. $100 on ebay. I still feel lucky. Sorry for getting of topic.