How to determine Win 7 Key type: upgrade or "full"?

[cognus]

Team - I seem to be stumping everyone with this question: I have a laptop with windows 7 Ultimate x86, activated. have the key. it is a retail key not OEM. The laptop originally had Windows XP Home. I need to know if this is a "full" windows 7 license so I can redeploy to a different system.
Can someone tell me how to determine the key type?

And it would help if I knew if it were a "student" upgrade or a retail upgrade like from newegg et al?

 

[inzone]

Your best option would be to call Microsoft as there is no way to tell from a key code what version it is. If the laptop had Windows XP home then why don't you know what version of Winows is on it.
Everybody knows that there is no upgrade path from XP to Windows 7 and if the laptop had Windows XP on it and now it has Windows 7 then what is on it now has to be a full version of Windows.

 

[bignastyid]

The coa sticker that has the product key on it should indicate oem, retail or upgrade.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

Read this and do a full install with upgrade media ^

 

[nbelote]

How did you acquire said laptop? If you have been the sole owner since it had Windows XP on it, then you would only need to tell us what you bought when you acquired Windows 7.

 

[cognus]

Team - I seem to be stumping everyone with this question: I have a laptop with windows 7 Ultimate x86, activated. have the key. it is a retail key not OEM. The laptop originally had Windows XP Home. I need to know if this is a "full" windows 7 license so I can redeploy to a different system.
Can someone tell me how to determine the key type?

And it would help if I knew if it were a "student" upgrade or a retail upgrade like from newegg et al?

yes, the several of you are right: turns out you can determine that it is [in this case] a retail key and there is nothing on the drive, or was, to indicate that an "upgrade" install was performed. in other words, the satellite was shipped with win xp home [to which it is now returned] but later someone did a full install of win 7 ulti from Retail media.
the only thing I can't determine, and possibly microsoft would not be able to , is whether the package was "student" retail version. I read conflicting things: some indicate that Ultimate was not offered at the Student discount, others differ

 

[JDFan]

According to MS once an upgrade version is used it becomes an activated "retail" product so your license would be a retail product ( they do not sell an upgrade version that becomes an OEM product ! )-- that said to reinstall and activate you would need both the old key for the product used to upgrade and the upgrade key if the auto activation does not work as the CS will ask you for the product key off of the qualifying OS to use the upgrade license key (IIRC the TOS on the upgrade product tells you to keep a copy of the original product's key in case it is needed for verification at a later date) - Does the system still have the original product key on the sticker placed on the case ?? If it does then you should be fine since you have both needed keys for activating once installed.

 

[cognus]

yep. original coa in prime condition. appreciate that tip jdf