Windows installs and buying licences.

dori2o

My BIL has bought a job lot of cosmetically damaged laptops.

These have no HDD but have everything else. they have 2gb ram and a 1.8Gb duo processor, some have a Blu-Ray/DVDrw drive whilst others is just the DVDrw.

A few are completely damaged and unrepairable, but on the basis of a quick glance at them I estimate that 18 of the 27 he's got are salvageable (may have to make 1 or 2 from the parts of 3 or 4 if you get my drift, especially the screens)

He wants me to do the work and we'll split the money we get for them 50/50.

I wanted to sell them on with a Linux OS so as to keep the costs down but he's adamant that he wants them to have Windows 7 installed on them.

My question is, I have a windows 7 disk, can I use this and buy licences for all the laptops individually, then sell them on with the licences, or will we have to buy 18 Windows 7 disks with licences?

closed

if they have coa stickers on, you could put the original os on

by the time you've bought w7 and a hard disk, that could be £100-150 especially if the disks are pata.

NiftyDigits

Why not re-install the original OS or XP for free? As likely they have an existing licence attached.

dori2o

closed wrote: »

if they have coa stickers on, you could put the original os on

by the time you've bought w7 and a hard disk, that could be £100-150 especially if the disks are pata.

The COA stickers have been removed. They were supposed to be business machines so I assume they may have used the COA's on other machines.

Thats why I wanted to sell them as Linux machines but BIL doesn't think we'll make a return on them by doing that.

I've just done a deal for 12 320GB SATA HDD's for £215, refurbished units, no bad sectors.

I may have to contact Microsoft direct and see what they say.

Thanks.

NiftyDigits

dori2o wrote: »

The COA stickers have been removed. They were supposed to be business machines so I assume they may have used the COA's on other machines.

I've just done a deal for 12 320GB SATA HDD's for £215, refurbished units, no bad sectors.

I may have to contact Microsoft direct and see what they say.

Thanks.

You don't need the COA to reinstall. Just the prerequisite Recovery Disc. The licence stays with the machine.... unless you have replaced the Motherboards.

dori2o

NiftyDigits wrote: »

You don't need to COA to reinstall. Just the prerequisite Recovery Disc. The licence stays with the machine.... unless you have replaced the Motherboards.

I don't know what was originally installed as none of the machines have any COA stickers or other identifiable stickers on them to state which OS they were running. None of them have a HDD or recovery disks.

We wanted to install the OS and (assuming we can just buy the licence and not have to buy a seperate copy of W7 for each machine) make a recovery CD to sell with the laptop.



Thanks

-TangleFoot-

NiftyDigits wrote: »

The licence stays with the machine...

That only applies to the OEM (system builder) version. If the business concerned had a volume licensing agreement with MS all bets are off.

Is Windows 7 really a good idea? Unless driver discs were provided with the machines you'll need to find the necessary software yourself.

NiftyDigits

dori2o wrote: »

I don't know what was originally installed as none of the machines have any COA stickers or other identifiable stickers on them to state which OS they were running. None of them have a HDD or recovery disks.

We wanted to install the OS and (assuming we can just buy the licence and not have to buy a seperate copy of W7 for each machine) make a recovery CD to sell with the laptop.



Thanks

You can scan the Motherboard and Search using the model number to find out what was installed before and then just use the appropriate recovery disc to reinstall the OS. Simple.
No need to pay out for anything.

NiftyDigits

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

That only applies to the OEM (system builder) version. If the business concerned had a volume licensing agreement with MS all bets are off.

Is Windows 7 really a good idea? Unless driver discs were provided with the machines you'll need to find the necessary software yourself.

The machines may have their own licence, in addition to any VL agreement.

colin79666

Why not stick Ubuntu on them and offer Windows as an option for the buyer? I doubt you would make any profit on Windows as the extra value of the laptop wouldn't exceed the cost of the license and your time to build them.

-TangleFoot-

NiftyDigits wrote: »

The machines may have their own licence...

• COA
• Microsoft® Windows® Operating System Licensing

A new Windows license is not required for a refurbished PC that has:

1. The original Certificate of Authenticity (COA) for a Windows operating system affixed to the PC, and
2. The original recovery media or hard-disk based recovery image associated with the PC.