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Thread: Is this legal?

  1. #1
    Ultimate Member porsch1909's Avatar
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    Is this legal?

    So my desktop came with XP pro on it. I upgraded that with an upgrade CD to Vista home premium.

    I bought a laptop with vista basic on it. For me to connect to the network at work I need to have XP pro on it.

    Would using my XP pro on my laptop be some copyright infringement?

  2. #2
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    Is your copy of XP Pro Retail or OEM ? ? ? If it is Retail you should be fine. If is an OEM that came with the desktop, like from Dell / HP .. etc, then no you can not legally use it. In most cases if it is a Dell / HP etc copy, it will not even install on a pc without doing a BIOS check to be sure it matches what the OS cd expected to see.

  3. #3
    Administrator Steve R Jones's Avatar
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    Technically it isn't legal...You saved money by getting the upgrade cd which isn't a 2 for 1 sale item
    "Vegetarians live up to nine years longer than the rest of us...Nine horrible, worthless, baconless years."

  4. #4
    Ultimate Member porsch1909's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bruceb View Post
    Is your copy of XP Pro Retail or OEM ? ? ? If it is Retail you should be fine. If is an OEM that came with the desktop, like from Dell / HP .. etc, then no you can not legally use it. In most cases if it is a Dell / HP etc copy, it will not even install on a pc without doing a BIOS check to be sure it matches what the OS cd expected to see.
    It is an OEM from a Dell PC, but the laptop is a Dell as well. So I don't see there being an issue there.

    Okay so I have a spare full install version of vista home premium lying around at home (don't ask) and I notice there is a 'change product key' button in vista. If I change the vista product key to my full install one then I could install the XP as a dual boot on my laptop surely? I won't need to do a clean install as well I hope.....

    I know I'm being a bit pedantic about this but if there is something illegal then I'm guessing me and my university could get in trouble!

  5. #5
    Mod w/ an attitude Sterling_Aug's Avatar
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    Once you have Vista installed, then you install XP on it for a dual boot, you will be required to do a FIXBOOT or a repair install of Vista again to fix the issues created when you put XP on it.

    You can not install an older Windows version when you already have a newer Windows version installed without making a mess of it.


    Always install in this order: Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2K, WinXP, Vista, Win7, Linux is ALWAYS last.

  6. #6
    Ultimate Member porsch1909's Avatar
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    Thanks Sterling. I may well just do a clean install and stick to have just XP installed. As far as I know all drivers and software are still compatible with it.

  7. #7
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    Best be checking to find out it the laptop has XP drivers of the laptop makers website.

    Some of us are stuck with Vista.

  8. #8
    Ultimate Member porsch1909's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Train View Post
    Best be checking to find out it the laptop has XP drivers of the laptop makers website.

    Some of us are stuck with Vista.

    Ah right good point...This may be more bother than it's worth...

  9. #9
    Mod w/ an attitude Sterling_Aug's Avatar
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    Most manufacturers still have XP drivers available since XP has 64% market share of the world OS installations.

    MS will continue to offer security fixes for XP thru 2014.

  10. #10
    Ultimate Member porsch1909's Avatar
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    Yeh I checked the Dell website and they have all the drivers for it. So it should be relatively simple.

    What is everyone's opinion on XP versis vista. I installed vista and never looked back. But some people hate it....

  11. #11
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    I am staying with XP for now. All my programs / apps work with it and in a lot of cases, upgrading to a Vista version can be very costly. Also my desktop pc is a Dell Dimension 8200 which will not support Vista due to video and RAM limitations .. uses Rambus RAM .. very, very costly. But I will be getting a copy of Vista Ultimate soon from club.live.com (at no cost) and it will be good to keep around. Never know if I will need it for something. Vista, is more eye candy for the users and too much of "Do you really want to do this" ? ? to keep the users from doing stupid stuff. I don't need that kind of hand-holding.

  12. #12
    Mod w/ an attitude Sterling_Aug's Avatar
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    I had Vista installed on a Dell Lattitude laptop and it worked great except for no Blackberry sync, no HP printer driver, and no scanner support.

    I went back to XP.

  13. #13
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    My toshiba, Vista home which I wiped and clean installed Ultimate, works like the Doc. ordered for me.

  14. #14
    Ultimate Member porsch1909's Avatar
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    So I went home to change the vista product key on my desktop...

    Then the realisation hit me...I've installed windows 7 beta on my desktop and this whole thread was a waste of time!

    Well maybe someone searching for a similar solution will be helped. I will try the XP install on Monday....IT guys aren't in to give me an IP until Tuesday anyway

  15. #15
    Ultimate Member porsch1909's Avatar
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    So I took the plunge and realised how much faster XP is than vista. Vista is just so....bloated it seems.

    I had some trouble with drivers not working which I downloaded from the dell website. So I thought I'd give the Dell drivers disc that came with it a go (thinking it would only have vista drivers) and it had XP drivers too! So I managed to get my wireless drivers installed.

    I have actually halved the number of processes running on start up

    Thanks guys!

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