OEM or not OEM

[mickeddie]

If I buy the OEM and have a need to reinstall it for any of a number of reasons (hard drive crash, new hard drive, reformat, etc.) will I be able to? I know from using XP PR that when the registration key did not work I called MS and told them I had a hard drive crash they gave me the key to unlock it. But this was NOT an OEM version.

Thanks!

Eddie

 

[mpjesse]

It's supposedly pretty much the same with Vista. If you format, reinstall, etc you'll need to call Microsoft. But, MAKE damn sure you tell them your hard drive crashed and nothing else. If you're doing a complete hardware upgrade and you tell them that, M$ will tell you to piss off and to buy another copy of Vista.

If I were you I'd get the OEM version... that way you won't have to dick around with installing XP if you want to do a clean install.

 

[mickeddie]

I got the OEM on ebay...got the full version of home premium for $120. Since it's OEM they are throwing in an internal cable to comply with MS and ebay. :lol:

What did you mean about "If I were you I'd get the OEM version... that way you won't have to dick around with installing XP if you want to do a clean install." Why would it be different with the OEM version as opposed to the retail version?

 

[mpjesse]

My bad... i thought he was contemplating whether or not to get upgrade or OEM.

I didn't read it right.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

It's supposedly pretty much the same with Vista. If you format, reinstall, etc you'll need to call Microsoft.

I've reinstalled Vista Ultimate OEM several times already , reactivated it over the Internet with no problems. At bit too buggy for me right now so I've reverted to XP.

BTW, no hardware changes at all between reinstalls, so whatever hardware profiling Vista does, it saw no changes. I think WinME or so would permit up to about 30% hardware change before requiring a phone call to MS.

 

[mpjesse]

See that concerns me. It sounds to me like WGA is sending a complete snapshot of your system to Microsoft during activation. If they are indeed doing that, it'll be really hard to convice M$ that you're just "reinstalling Vista."

Know what I mean?