Windows licensing & HIR (serious question)

[Chianti]

Hope I can get a straight answer in STS.
I'm asking here because there are some knowledgeable people around.

Regarding disk-imaging backups and HIR (Hardware Independent Recovery):

Laptops come with a pre-installed OEM version of Windows, which is tied to the hardware (specifically the motherboard). In my own case, I actually formatted my laptop and installed a bought OEM version of Vista, so I have a disk and serial, unlike most.

Imagine you're using ShadowProtect or Acronis to take daily disk-images. Your system dies. You perform a HIR to clone the image to a new laptop. Your (OEM) Windows boots, recognises it's not on the right hardware and deactivates. I think from that point it will only boot to safe mode. Effectively, disk-image backups of OEM Windows seem to be useless for HIR.

Whereas doing HIR using a clean install of a retail Windows OS isn't a problem, because the OS allows itself to be activated on new hardware five times automatically online before having to do phone activation.

My question is, what happens if I 'inplace' upgrade my OEM to a retail version (ie. OEM Vista Premium to Retail Win7 Premium). Will this particular installation reactivate on a different machine after a HIR, or will it still deactivate because it was based on an OEM install?

Believe it or not, I can't find a definitive answer to this.
Microsoft 'techs' are fucking useless and are saying different things.
One even told me that OEM Windows can't be upgraded at all???

Thanks...

 

[cheshire]

I can't really answer all your questions. But if you make an acronis backup, and restore it to a different computer, that computer should in theory have its own license key. Windows will boot, and you can just reactivate with your "new" OEM key and everything is just peachy with MS.

Upgrading an OEM to a retail copy would make it a retail copy. The only thing that determines which "version" of Windows you own is your license key. So when you upgrade to Win 7 your Vista key & license are irrelevant.

 

[Chianti]

Thanks for your reply. I got some other answers today too...

> that computer should in theory have its own license key. Windows will boot, and you
> can just reactivate with your "new" OEM key and everything is just peachy with MS.

I think the key will only work if you have the same OEM OS on both machines, and even then it will probably need phone activation. However, if your new laptop came with Win7 on it, and your backed-up image is Vista, then the Win7 key will not activate the cloned image of Vista.

> Upgrading an OEM to a retail copy would make it a retail copy

Yes, that's the information I got today too. And a clone of that is transferable. The cloned image can be activated online five times. After that, phone activation is required.

However, if you use a cheaper 'upgrade' version of Windows to update your OEM version, the upgrade does not negate the OEM part of the license, and so your installation is still tied to the machine and is not transferable by cloning.

So today I bought a full retail Win7 to upgrade my OEM Vista with. Therefore, hopefully my backups will now support HIR and can be activated when cloned onto new hardware.

The absurd thing is, now that functional HIR technology is finally available, the 80% of PC users who are backing up their pre-installed OEM versions of Windows will not be able to clone their images to new machines, simply due to the Microsoft licensing and activation procedure. Insane.

Anyway, thanks for the info.