I had an OEM license for Vista and I bought a Vista to W7/Pro upgrade from MS 2 years ago. It came in a box and had its own product key which I entered after the upgrade. It was a clean install. I am fully aware that it is no longer an OEM license.
From an MS licensing perspective, is it now seen as a full retail license? If it is not, what is its designation?
It's a full license for most purposes - although the jury is out as to whether it can be moved to a new machine that doesn't also have a pre-existing qualifying Windows license.
Yes' it's a qualifying License for the WIndows 10 free upgrade, if that's the underlying reason for your question.
I would like to upgrade it to W10 using the free upgrade. And later I would like to get the W10 ISO and do a clean install. I want to use that PC until it either dies or is no longer performing well under W10. Obviously I want to take advantage of the free upgrade period (1yr) and have a genuine W10 license in my hands when that offer expires. I understand that a full retail license allows me to use this license on another machine if I retire it from the original.
Neither this license, nor the free Windows 10 upgrade are Full Retail licenses - The Upgrade still requires a qualifying base license, and Windows 10 (and any later version) will expire with the computer.
I do appreciate you responding, but unfortunately I am now swinging like a pendulum. I thought you said that I do have a qualifying base license, bit you were not quite sure if it was a FULL retail license.
This is confusing because MS just gives us a trickle of info and we are left with getting our info from this Gabe guy who says one thing one day and something else the next day. He says that you can do the W10 upgrade first from a genuine W7/8 license and download the ISO later which will allow you to do a clean install of W10 over the upgrade. The ISO will recognize the license from the upgrade, be it OEM or retail. This is now a full W10 license and the EULA for retail remains unchanged. The license is portable. He was very unclear on OEM licenses. I see that he goes on to talk about W10 being tied to the life of the device for upgrades.
Your Windows License is an Upgrade - and will forever remain that.
It can only be used to upgrade qualifying licenses (XP, Vista, and lower editions of Win7). Such licenses are only transferable to another machine with a qualifying base license (at least in theory - in practice, it's easy to do)
The Free Upgrade for Windows 10 is also an Upgrade license - and will definitely expire with the machine on which it qualified if the base license is an OEM one. It is NOT transferable to a new machine.
In the case of Full Retail licenses, I haven't seen a definitive statement from MS.
I'm not even certain that the traditional Retail license will exist anymore in Windows 10 - I have yet to see the License Terms.
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