general activation question

I sometimes work on PCs for friends and coworkers. I recently had reason to wonder if the Windows 7 Product Key would work on an prebuilt machine in the same way XP used to. What I mean is, may I use an OEM disk to reinstall on a prebuilt using the PCs own Key?
Thanks!
Steve

Welcome to the Seven Forums

If you are talking about Windows 7 with reinstalling the OEM the answer is yes take a look at this tutorial http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html

Jerry

Thank you Jerry. The issue that came up for me before occured with an obsured key sticker. I used Magic Jelly Bean to recover the key. After 30 days, it came up as non genuine, at that point, a poster on Dell forums told me I had to use SLP media. That answer made me wonder, what are the Key stickers for then?

I had a similar issue with a Vista laptop that I changed to Windows 7 (retail copy) then I bought a new laptop and use that copy of Windows 7 on it and went back to Vista on the laptop using the DVDs I burnt when it was new, then I tried using a program similar to jellybean to get the key from and then I did a clean install of Vista using that key and it did not work luckily the original key on the sticker was still readable and I use that key and the clean install work perfect so you need to trust that sticker.

Jerry

The keys you find with the keyfinder programs are generic keys that the OEMs use for mass activation. They are no good on another PC. Here you have to use the key from the COA sticker.

But you can use an OEM installation disk for the installation itself.