XP license question

mukki

got a computer from the wifes work (house for disabled adults)

motherboard and power supply is fried on an emachine 420, a very common problem when i googled it

anyway I sourced a similar motherboard on ebay

it will work out at about €80 for the parts

do they have to buy a new xp license, i think paying another few hundred will make fixing it pointless when dell have savage pcs from €500

Capt'n Midnight

If the other motherboard had an XP OEM license then no problem.

The OEM license clause works both ways, if the machine was shipped with XP ( very high chance ) then the license can't be removed from it's motherboard unless they upgraded to a volume licnese within 90 days of getting the machine, and about zero point in doing that since XP has been the newest version of windows for years now.

Do emachine sell pc without windows at all ?

subway

normally changing a motherboard is considered changing pc by microsoft.
an exemption is in the case of a damaged mobo being replaced.

so your still legal, technically

Capt'n Midnight

subway wrote:

an exemption is in the case of a damaged mobo being replaced.

only while under warranty !!!

M$ OEM sucks big time and ~90% of windows licenses are OEM

Microsoft don't enforce the OEM terms, I've yet to hear of a reseller being prosecuted for selling OEM without a motherboard. So a plausable deniability would be to ring up a reseller with a pre-sales question and ask would it be to to buy a copy of the OEM with a Power supply or a floppy drive or whatever, if they say yes then you could in future refer microsoft to them.

Anyway looking at the emachine site looks like you can't get one without windows, so while your license has died with the old m/b the replacement m/b would still have it's license

subway

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

only while under warranty !!!

well, considering it doesnt actually state that anywhere in the eula,
and a few of the oem handbooks have the same sentence, minus the "in warranty" part id be going with my definition
if the guy is reinstalling an identical mobo, ie, the same sku, then he will still be covered by his own machines license.
i dont know if the mobo will come with a windows license as thats probably all ready incorrectly installed on the sellers new pc, but technically it is covered by that too.

Capt'n Midnight

yeah microsoft don't use english the way we do. My favorite is "Remove All" when compared to the four page file list of office files that aren't removed.

They have had to revise the Vista license because they conveyed the wrong meaning on the XP one :rolleyes:

humaxf1

I've replaced motherboards/reinstalled XP(original motherboard) in emachines lots of times. There is no problem with the activation when i ring up microsoft if the online activation fails.

I obiviously use the XP sticker on the case and 'a' XP SP1 disc. Never had a problem.

Capt'n Midnight

humaxf1 wrote:

I've replaced motherboards/reinstalled XP(original motherboard) in emachines lots of times. There is no problem with the activation when i ring up microsoft if the online activation fails.

I obiviously use the XP sticker on the case and 'a' XP SP1 disc. Never had a problem.

<sigh> before windows 98 you had a 1 in 7 chance that telephone numbers in the 04 directory would allow you to install the software, doesn't make it legit. <sigh>

Microsoft continually impose conditions that they don't enforce, in the US this is allowed with the like of submarine patents. IMHO microsoft could reach a point where sales fall and the return on investment would be less than that gained by going after every one who has broken a license agreement and investing that money elsewhere. It's a bit like having an old whaling fleet, if you refurbish the fleet and harvest whales substainably you would have to spend so much to make a certain amount of money per year. If on the otherhand you run your old fleet into the ground wearing it out completely and exterminating the whales you need to invest a lot less money. And you now have a big pile of money to invest in xboxs or Apple or Novell or MSNC or a GoogleKiller or TheNextBigThing which could make you more money per year than staying in the whaling business.

So I'm just reminding people just how restrictive microsoft licenses are. This also means that most long term microsoft users have broken the license at some stage, though I'm not sure if that means they have been criminalised.