Solved When and where can a Windows-7 OEM Liciense be used?

[Mike Lynch]

Years back, I had had a Windows-XL PC.
As time went by, I upgraded memory and the hard drive.
When Windows-7 came along, I purchased an OEM copy and installed it on that PC.
Things progressed and the PC became slower.
I purchased a re-furbished PC off the Internet without an Operating System installed on it.
I installed my OEM copy of Windows-7 on it and discarded the XL-PC.
Two weeks ago, the Company where my wife works sold off some PC they did not need.
Both are hardware wise two to three years old and both came with Windows-10 installed.
I do not like nor know Windows-10 and decided to have the memory increased and a SSD installed in them.
One had 4gb and the other 8gbs, both had 5400rpm Hard Drives with 8mb cache each.
I took then to Best Buy and signed up for the Geek Squad to do the hardware upgrades.
I also signed up for the Geek Squad to downgrade the PC's from Windows-10 to Windows-7.
I explained how I was going to discard my older PC's and wanted these running under Windows-7.
No problem they said!
I dropped off the new PC's and the hardware was upgraded.
I went to drop off the Envelopes with the COA on them and I was told they could not install the O/S.
They said I need to have 'purchased' software, which I did.
I purchased the copies of Windows-7 that I have from Trinity Software in Tampa Florida.
They claimed that OEM Software is tied to the serial number of the mother board and cannot be transferred.
I find this hard to believe.

Can anyone confirm what I have been told?

Microsoft never had a problem when I would call to have the Windows-7 installed activated.

 

[swarfendor437]

If the Windows 7 envelope has a 'tear-off' sticker to attach to the machine it is going to be installed on then as far as I know it should not be an issue. I built two machines from scratch and ordered a Windows 8.1 Pro for one family member and Windows 7 Pro (both 64-bit) for the other and both OEM (for original system builds). Provided the software has never been installed, and would be indicated by a secure envelope, then there should not be an issue - if the envelope seal was broken it could have been installed on a different machine before being sold to you - that is the caveat.

 

[Bongo]

They claimed that OEM Software is tied to the serial number of the mother board and cannot be transferred.
I find this hard to believe.

Can anyone confirm what I have been told?

it is tied to the motherboard, so it will not activate.


Put Windows 10 back on it's not that bad, and can look the Windows 7 with software to make the start menu and windows explorer look and act like windows 7.


Jerry

 

[samuria]

Some OEM like Dell and other well known pc makers do indead tie their oem to the pc and also the bios try and install i ton a none Dell and it wont install. But some oem you can buy with a HD or simliar Stricley speaking they are for a new pc only and if you get a new pc you should buy another copy.


Its also possible if they have hardarwe upgrades to win10 there may be no win7 drivers for the pc now

 

[torchwood]

Hi Mike,

dont know what version was installed on those company machines, but can tell you a couple of things

1) Allmost all PRO and above versions of W10 provided by Major OEM's came with automatic downgrade rights -just visit the manufacturers homepage.
(MS even has pages regarding this)

2) there are 2 types of OEM Major, Dell etc, and System Builder
suspect yours is the latter although not specifically correct according to the terms, EULA, this Key can be transferred to another machine, deleted from the other, MS has not as far as i know tried to block this option

Roy

have a look at Superflys >> 1st << post here run the tool it will show if it has W7 product key
ShowKeyPlus - Windows 10 Forums