Solved Win7 oem license good if Win8 upgrade from XP install?

[dianedebuda]

Think this is ok, but read what is probably scare tripe that MS was documenting Win8 upgrade machine info with Win8 upgrade and killing licenses for old o/s on that machine.

Have an older machine prebuilt with Win7 Home that I upgraded to Pro with Anytime. Saved image. Friend was having XP troubles, so I installed a legal XP license on the box & used it for a while. Then loaded 8.1 Preview. Now want to use Win8 upgrade (the cheap one from Jan) on the box. To me, that's an upgrade over XP. I'm thinking my Win7 license is still legit if I need it in the future.

 

[AndyHK]

Think this is ok, but read what is probably scare tripe that MS was documenting Win8 upgrade machine info with Win8 upgrade and killing licenses for old o/s on that machine.

Have an older machine prebuilt with Win7 Home that I upgraded to Pro with Anytime. Saved image. Friend was having XP troubles, so I installed a legal XP license on the box & used it for a while. Then loaded 8.1 Preview. Now want to use Win8 upgrade (the cheap one from Jan) on the box. To me, that's an upgrade over XP. I'm thinking my Win7 license is still legit if I need it in the future.

Hiya there

Let me see if I have this right

1) Machine with windows 7 installed (oem) upgraded to Windows 8

as I understand it, your legal licence for that machine is now windows 8


2) you then installed XP on the same computer and now want to upgrade that to windows 8

as I understand this wont you have to pay for another win 8 (8.1 this time) upgrade, as your licence for windows 7.. has been upgraded to 8 ? in other words what you have is windows 8 and windows XP.


Interesting question, I have no doubt someone with more knowledge than me will come along to answer this.

Andy

 

[dianedebuda]

No, that is not correct. The Win8 currently on the box is Win8.1 Preview which will die Jan 15. The last legal license installed on the box was XP.

 

[theog]

As you are talking older Win XP PC.

New Windows 8.1 requirements strand some users on 8


Microsoft confirms some older AMD processors do not support Windows 8.1 - Neowin

 

[dianedebuda]

This is a Phenom 4x that orig had Win7 preinstalled on it. Used it for a couple of years as my main Win7 box, but got another box as a main and installed XP on this one to help identify a friend's problems. Plan to put Win8 on it now, but just trying to verify that my orig Win7 license will still be good after I do the Win8 Upgrade in case I need it to help my friend again who's converting from XP to Win7. Win 8.1 Preview working fine on this box, so don't expect any problems switching to Win8 "for real".

The orig license for this box was Win7; the last installed o/s was XP. I'm trying to make sure that my Win8 Upgrade is XP to Win8, not Win7 to Win8. I'm thinking that "saves" my Win7 license.

 

[Britton30]

If the w7 license was an OEM or System Builder OEM it will have its key tied to the original machine it was installed on. I however, have heard of a case similar that the user called MS and got them to activate the OEM license to a new machine. His case was a motherboard replacement due to a failure though.

 

[dianedebuda]

Apparently I'm just not communicating well. I do not want to move the Win7 license to another box or mb. I just want to make sure that since I had a legal XP license installed on this box, that I'll be doing an XP to Win8 Upgrade; my original Win7 license is not affected and I could legally run the box as a Win7 in the future if I wanted to.

The only reason I've posted here was that I saw some posts on the web suggesting that MS enters the mb id or something in a database and would effectively lock the box to Win8. You could not use an older o/s. Seems far fetched and don't think it'd apply in my situtation... Does anyone know anything about this "license invalidation" of the "from" o/s? Good enough just to have the "from" XP license key saved somewhere?

 

[Britton30]

Yes the w7 license will still be fine, as far as I know MS doesn't "kill" a license, you own it for life. For example, the XP I had before going to w7 was a full retail one, I have since given it to someone else and it activated fine. The w7 will do likewise.

 

[gregrocker]

Hi again Diane -

XP when used to qualify for Upgrade is never deactivated except inasmuch as it should not any longer be installed while serving as the qualifier. Even that is on the honor system.

You can always switch a qualifying XP from qualifying for Win7 to qualifying for Win8 (if that phone app uses Upgrades) and vice versa, or going back to retail XP qualifying for nothing. It is only serving as qualifier while the higher version is installed.

During the time it's serving as qualifier one should not use the qualifying XP.

I hope this is clear. If not just ask back any questions.

 

[dianedebuda]

Thanks, gregrocker. I thought the "MS has a license-kill database" posts I saw elsewhere where bogus. I'm pretty comfortable now going ahead with my Win8 Upgrade. Since I retired from programming, don't keep up like I used to with license specifics -sometimes they're pretty convoluted.

 

[Britton30]

The license-kill database does exist to a point. MS does have a large list of blocked or black-listed keys which have been stolen or keygen created in the case of illegal or counterfeit installs.

For what you're doing there is no killing off a key though.