UNSOLVED
Complaint about Microsoft's Licensing Practices
Dear Microsoft+Dell,
I recently bought a Dell laptop coming with Windows 7 Pro. The Windows were preinstalled, and of course they were running fine. A small worry come up to me when I noticed that the laptop did not have the familiar sticker certifying the genuinity of windows and its activation key anymore.
I am very scarcely using Windows and the only reason I bought it on this machine was in order to accomplish some administrative tasks run by windows programs of my university. Therefore, I was planning to install windows as a guest operating system on a virtual machine and run Windows from my host Linux OS. I did NOT want to use windows by dual booting the machine, since this destroys my main work in order to accomplish a secondary task.
I was shocked to learn that this was not possible and that I needed to buy a NEW license in order to be able to do so. I am not happy, because the advertising of the product does not make this clear (see e.g. this ad and click on the Help me Choose link of the operating system paragraph, of course all other ads from various shops that I found are not any better on this issue). I consider this as not a fair consumer practice that needs to be corrected. I am sure that you can find technical solutions to such problems.
Making things complicated for us does not help. I know you guys are complaining a lot about piracy. But as Google said:piracy is an availability and pricing problem. I would add, trying to control how we run our machines does not help either.
Posted on my blog
beamermt79
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Posted December 24th, 2015 14:00
I thought windows 7 still had the COA stickers under the battery on laptops and Windows 8.x and higher had them in the BIOS/UEFI? I purchased a custom built computer from a local computer shop with windows 7 pro installed and I still received the COA sticker...
I thought windows 7 still had the COA stickers under the battery on laptops and Windows 8.x and higher had them in the BIOS/UEFI? I purchased a custom built computer from a local computer shop with windows 7 pro installed and I still received the COA sticker...
He wants to take his OEM WIndows license from his Dell and use on another PC. Just cannot be done.
Philip_Yip
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Posted December 25th, 2015 01:00
I thought windows 7 still had the COA stickers under the battery on laptops and Windows 8.x and higher had them in the BIOS/UEFI? I purchased a custom built computer from a local computer shop with windows 7 pro installed and I still received the COA sticker...
Major OEMs
For major OEMs such as Dell these days usually Windows 7 Pro is coming using downgrade rights from Windows 8.x/10 Pro i.e. is available only on the Work sector. For example these OptiPlex 9020 models:
"Windows 7 Professional (64Bit Windows 8.1 License, Media)- English, French, German, Dutch, Italian"
http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/optiplex-9020-desktop/pd?ref=PD_Family
These have a Windows 8.1/10 Pro compatible UEFI BIOS embedded system locked preinstallation product key.
Dell Windows 7 Professional Reinstallation Media inputs a generic Windows 7 Professional product key. This generic OEM Windows 7 Professional key is the same for all Dells with Windows 7 Professional preinstalled and activates if and only if a valid Dell BIOS is present. For more details about Major OEM SLP Activation see my guide here:
Minor OEMs otherwise known as the Generic OEM System Builder License
For minor OEMs such as the local computer shop with a custom build. They would have bought an OEM system builder license. Therefore would affix a COA for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.
beamermt79
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Posted December 26th, 2015 11:00
Ahh.. I swear it gets more complicated every year.
Philip_Yip
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Posted December 24th, 2015 12:00
The Windows OEM license is tied to the motherboard. It is non-transferable and has to be supported by the OEM opposed to Microsoft. If you a VM, the hardware is emulated so Microsoft sees VM1 on Host1 as a different machine to Host1. OEMs can only help you to install Windows directly on their hardware and usually do not support a more complicated setup such as virtualisation or dual boot.
Check if your University has access to a Dreamspark program and you can perhaps get a Windows 7 Pro key from there.
Windows 11 Installation Guide
Windows 7 Installation Guide