Where to buy a OEM ?

JasX

mikey72 wrote: »

Of course it's transferrable, and licenced, and while I can't say I've ever needed support, I wouldn't imagine every end user of an oem system that rings up gets told that aren't supported.

no they're told to contact their Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) for support silly, and if you read the OEM license its 100% non transferrable, ever, period.

mikey72

Right, now I see what you mean by non transferrable.
It can be passed on so long as it stays wth the pc it was sold with, most changes can be made to the pc, apart from the motherboard, and that can be changed if defective)
The new owner will have full use of the licence, (and Microsoft will actually speak to them after the oem has tried and failed by the way).
It's fairly academic now about transferring the operating sytem between pc and new pc, usually by the time you update the pc, windows is on a new version anyway. So it can be a good cost effective system. Used properly.

JasX

mikey72 wrote: »

It's fairly academic now about transferring the operating sytem between pc and new pc, usually by the time you update the pc, windows is on a new version anyway. So it can be a good cost effective system. Used properly.

yes, this is what I did:

buy vista home premium RETAIL for £60 in june 2009 including free upgrade to windows7, install and use for a few months.

claim free Win7 upgrade (and actually free collected from a PC world store)

format hard disk, sell no longer needed vista RETAIL box on ebay for £45

clean install windows7 at a net cost of £15

OEM I'd have had to throw in the bin and net costs would have been around £100

Basil1234

oem you could have had changed the harddrive and on a fresh install 'how' would mircosoft know answer they couldn't simples.
The people that slag of the oem version dont know what there doing is the true answer and would need the retail for the mircosoft support when it all doesn't work

[Deleted User]

Basil1234 wrote: »

oem you could have had changed the harddrive and on a fresh install 'how' would mircosoft know answer they couldn't simples.
The people that slag of the oem version dont know what there doing is the true answer and would need the retail for the mircosoft support when it all doesn't work

Huh?

..

JasX

Basil1234 wrote: »

'how' would mircosoft know answer they couldn't simples.
The people that slag of the oem version dont know what there doing is the true answer

you can change a very limited number of components only. "how" microsoft know is that you transmitted a summary of your original hardware to microsoft the first time you activated the OEM version which they then keep a record of along with your product key. If, later on too much doesn't match up it won't activate.

Quite clearly its you and people like you who don't know what they're doing with windows installs and activations that even consider OEM. You can find a full technical description of how microsoft gather information about your original system's hardware for activation here:

http://www.licenturion.com/xp/fully-licensed-wpa.txt

once you've scannned thru that you'll quite quickly begin know the difference between "knowing what you're doing" and "not knowing what you're doing" and why the nonsense of your 'just change the hard drive' example puts you firmly in the latter category

As a summary for the rest of you here is a full list of what hardware windows gathers information about during activation:

double word | offset | length | bit-field value based on

---

+

---

+

---

+

---

H1 | 0 | 10 | volume serial number string
| | | of system volume
H1 | 10 | 10 | network adapter MAC address
| | | string
H1 | 20 | 7 | CD-ROM drive hardware
| | | identification string
H1 | 27 | 5 | graphics adapter hardware
| | | identification string
H2 | 0 | 3 | unused, set to 001
H2 | 3 | 6 | CPU serial number string
H2 | 9 | 7 | harddrive hardware
| | | identification string
H2 | 16 | 5 | SCSI host adapter hardware
| | | identification string
H2 | 21 | 4 | IDE controller hardware
| | | identification string
H2 | 25 | 3 | processor model string
H2 | 28 | 3 | RAM size
H2 | 31 | 1 | 1 = dockable
| | | 0 = not dockable

(might have been updated 'slightly' for Win7)

Basil1234

Quite clearly its you and people like you who don't know what they're doing with windows installs and activations that even consider OEM.

hhmmm strange i had version of xp pro oem running of 3 diff machines now all new self build so i really must not no know what i'm doing really glad you told me that i wondered what i was doing wrong. :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

[Deleted User]

Basil1234 wrote: »

hhmmm strange i had version of xp pro oem running of 3 diff machines now all new self build so i really must not no know what i'm doing really glad you told me that i wondered what i was doing wrong. :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Just because you've gotten it working doesn't mean it's legitimate, which is the point I was making..

JasX

Basil1234 wrote: »

hhmmm strange i had version of xp pro oem running of 3 diff machines now all new self build so i really must not no know what i'm doing really glad you told me that i wondered what i was doing wrong. :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

even if you're being vaguely truthful good luck explaining all those hardware ID hashes to microsoft over the phone if ever you need reactivate one of them and are made to phone up...

..and if we are going down the 'Basil1234 special' licensing route you may as well have advised the OP to just get a pirate copy off bittorrent

mikey72

Probably did it less than 30 days ago.
I was putting one together, and while testing it the phoneline got hit by lightning, which took out the network driver on the motherboard, and the main router. Replaced the router, and I tried an old network card, which worked, then had to replace it with a new faster one. The oem version of xp must be near its last change by now, but it's all worked ever since fortunately.