OEM Questions

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itzhobbes

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 14, 2006
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I'm considering purchasing the Vista Home Premium x64 edition. My question is what makes the OEM version different from retail? I've been reading the forums and it says that once you install it on 1 machine you can't install it on another one? Is this because of legal reasons or the software on the disc just won't install on another machine? I tend to reformat my computer alot so if I can't install the OS on the same machine or another one that I build then there would be no point in purchasing the OEM. Thanks.
 
OEM's are cheaper for the fact their installation are tied to the hardware you first activate them (and you can legally buy an OEM copy only when you also buy a new hardware item: they are sold together). Retail versions allow you to install them on different machines and activate without problems, i.e., you buy a retail Vista and then you can entirely upgrade your system, reinstall it and activate again over a totally different PC. If you have an OEM license you gotta sell it with your old rig and buy a new copy with your new one due to the above mentioned strings.
 
Like Endeavor said, OEM versions are tied to the machine you activated the operating system with. If you decide to format your harddrive, and do a fresh install, you shouldn't experience any difficulties, as you're still putting the OEM OS on the same machine. Some hardware changes to your computer *could* cause an activation problem, the next time you install, but usually a call to Microsoft Tech., can remedy this. If you get a new computer the OEM license prohibits you from moving the copy of that OS to the new machine. It has to stay with the other computer.

FYI, my motherboard died a few weeks ago, and I had to get a new one. I went from a Chaintech VNF4 Ultra to an Asus A8N SLI-SE (socket 939's are hard to come by), and I didn't have any problems. However, I maybe have gotten lucky.
 
If you reinstall on the same system, with the same hardware, regardless of what license type you get, you should be using a disk imaging program to restore the OS to a clean, already activated state.
 
I've been reading something about disk imaging but I have no idea what that means?
 
Just get the OEM copy, cheaper and you don't get the fancy plastic box.

You can only use the key on one computer, but if you do a complete upgrade, and don't have the existing install anymore, should be no problem and just use the same key.

Only problem is when you have multiple computers and you try to use the same key.

Can you activate multiple times with the retail version? -- don't think so...
 
itzhobbes said:
I've been reading something about disk imaging but I have no idea what that means?
Click to expand...
It is a method of taking a complete copy of your system's hard drives, and compressing it to something equivalent to a big zip file. Then, if you need to restore your PC, you can just copy that image down over your PC. Most people who do this, create a nice clean image of their system once they get the OS installed and updated, and their drivers and basic apps loaded. Then, to do a "fresh install" only takes a few minutes.
 
Interesting Deacon. So then do they just copy it say to an external Hard Drive, format a computer then copy over the files to the newly formated computer?
 
Somewhat. I use Ghost and BartPE that I saw recommended on here. I boot to the BartPE disc, and then run Ghost. I can send the image file, which would be computername.gho for me, to either a second hard drive in my computer, an external USB drive, or to my server on my network.

For work, I have a BartPe disc with all of our laptop and desktop network drivers loaded, so I can send or retrieve a Ghost image file from my server.

If you are restoring the image to a PC, you don't need to format or do anything to prepare the target hard drive. The image file contains all of that, including boot info.
 
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