New
#1
entered product key, but not yet activated, can I reuse on diff hardw?
Hi,
I ran into a weird situation where I was putting together a pc from spare parts for a friend. He bought a hard drive and a copy of windows (win 7 home premium 64). As it turned out the cpu I was using could not do 64bit, so I installed the win 7 home premium 32 bit trial, as I understood I could use the product key from the copy he purchased.
Now he is not happy with the performance of this computer and wants to purchase newer components to make a faster system - including CPU and 8 gb ram, so the 64 bit version would be more appropriate. I checked and the 32 bit windows had not yet activated. I used SLMGR to remove the product key from the registry and uninstall it. I think this puts it back into trial mode, if I'm not mistaken.
What I need to know is that, from Microsoft's point of view, has this key been used up and tied to this 32bit install, or can I still use the key from the 64bit product he bought on a 64bit install. If he's stuck tied to this 32 bit install I will tell him not to buy more than 4gb of ram.
Thanks in advance for any help.