Hello everyone,
I plan to be building an mini-itx pc in the coming holiday season and I was wondering as far as the operating system if I was able to reuse the Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM from a retail desktop from Acer. I was going to basically going to restore my computer to factory settings and then clone the drive to a solid state drive and then completely wipe the existing hardrive and have it for storage drive. Would the os completely reject my new motherboard and hardware though? It was an install without a disk aswell.
Also in this computer theres some type of reserve for system recovery specific to Acer, should and can I remove it?
Thank you for your time.
I think... if you go here http://www.windowsupgradeoffer.com you can tell them that you just bought a computer from say best buy and you want to upgrade to windows 8. It will let you upgrade for 14.99. It will email you a promo code.
Then you go here....http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-to-windows-8 It will do it's thing to check out your system. It will ask you for your CC info. After you enter it, it will ask you to confirm. You enter the promo code and it will drop the price to 14.99. Once you submit it will ask you to install it or download an iso or do an usb install. Pick the iso or usb. You'll can install it on the new system and you'll have the key in your inbox. I think anyways
http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/clean-install-windows-8-upgrade-media-144648
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/10/30/microsoft-website-loophole-lets-anyone-buy-windows-8-pro-for-just-15/
I thank you for your advice but I do not want Windows 8.
why not?
I don't think you can move the OEM license. I recall correctly the vendors have a chip that the install checks for the key. So the key printed on the case has to match the embeded. I think it uses WMI to check it. You may want to google Windows WMI product key
I'm not talking about a install per say, literally plugging the hard drive into the computer.
It will reject the hardware. It gives you a phone number, call it. Tell them your computer "broke" and you need to repair it. They let you have it anyways. I've done this atleast a dozen times.
When you switch out that much hardware it is going to know it is in a different computer. It is going to flag that it is in use on two machines.
google
"The activation server determined the specified product key is in use"
Also why don'y you want to use Windows 8? 15 bucks for a legal copy of windows is an awesome deal. It isn't going to last long either.
I've done it a DOZEN times. As long as you no longer continue using the old pc (with internet). I have had personally a OEM windows 7 disk good for 1 pc, in 3 seperate builds. I've switched the mobo, cpu, gfx, hdd, ssd all at once 3 times with 1 copy of windows. Never had a problem.
on the old computer, search for sysprep in your 'windows/system32' directory, run it, click generalize, and go..
this will un install all the drivers, reset your activation, and roll windows back to the setup. you can then plug the drive in to a new computer, run through the install and there you go..
something to note, your user account will still exist, so you will have to make a new user with a new name, but afterwards you can just remove that user and use the old one..
im assuming your windows 7, so you should have a product key coa on the machine, it may work, it may not.. if it doesnt, PM me the make of your computer, and ill see if i can help you out :)
ah shit, lol didnt even realise... oh well :D