Trading in Laptop, Windows 7 Activation ?

jerryrs · 18 Dec 2010

Hi, I am going to trade in my laptop which is currently running a retail purchased copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. The laptop originally had Vista on it. I need to wipe the hard drive and return it with the recovery and OS disks for Vista. My question is can I reuse my retail copy of Windows 7 on another machine or perhaps sell my copy on ebay? Is there an unactivation process I need to go through to safely "disconnect" my Windows 7 activation from the laptop I am trading in?

Thanks for the help!

Jerry

richc46 · 18 Dec 2010

If you did not have an OEM version of the OS
You can wipe the old drive and install Seven on a new computer. If it is the full retail
The question about deactivate is no
Although, this has come up before and some think that it should be deactivated.
I am almost certain, just wipe the old computer
Take the retail DVD and install with the key that came with the DVD

gregrocker · 22 Dec 2010

A retail copy of Win7 can migrate to any computer of your choice for life. Just wipe the HD or Win7 partition.

If it is upgrade, you'll need a qualifying XP or Vista which doesn't have to be installed, just not used again while it is qualifying to use Upgrade version.