I recently read a post in a Windows 7 forum in which the poster
claimed that product keys of the OEM and retail variety are
universally accepted on MS media. That is, to say, if you possessed a
retail disk, that it would accept an OEM product key when doing a
full, clean install. Can anyone verify if this is true? If so, is
the reverse situation true, as in using an OEM disk to do an install
with a retail key?
Also, does anyone know where I can find a list of the MS media part
numbers for the various editions? The part number I'm referring to is
generally seen in the XNN-NNNNN format, where X is a letter and N is a
numeral.
I can verify that you may use an OEM product key with the retail
media iso's mentioned in Andre Da Costa's post (marked as an answer)
in the MS Answers thread below:
I want to do clean install on my dell laptop
<
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...l-laptop/616081b0-dda4-4d10-88a3-d6150cb4241f>
In my case, in mid-May I installed a new SSD in my wife's Dell
Inspiron 1764 (Intel i5) laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium x64
and did not want to use the install media I'd created from the
original Dell recovery partition nor from the supplied Dell
installation disk (it actually came with the laptop without
asking!). I used the Windows 7 Home Premium (x64) - X17-58997 iso in
the above thread and burned my install disc.
I had no problems installing Windows although I did not let Windows
Update install any drivers, I'd downloaded the most current drivers
available for her system from Dell support and had them ready on her
thumb drive.
As to activation, I did not let Windows activate during
installation, I selected to skip that. When I was sure the install
was stable and completely updated and all drivers and her major
programs installed, I activated her machine online using the product
key on the COA without problem. I had used MagicJellybean to
recovery the product key that activated the original OEM install
which turned out to be different than the key on the COA. I believe
the key I recovered was Dell's OEM key (SLP key?). Anyway, it's been
nearly 2 months since I activated her system and haven't had any
problems or notices (yet), but doubt if I will - but you never know
for sure.
As a side-note, when I installed the SSD I also upgraded the RAM on
her machine from 4GB to 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz RAM for the VMs she runs
in VirtualBox, plus she sometimes has over 60-70 Internet Explorer
windows open. Her laptop (our first SSD) is now the quickest machine
of the 6 computers we have in the house (and we each have a desktop
with an i7 and 12GB DDR3 1600MHz Triple Channel RAM). The SSD made a
dramatic difference in performance, the biggest I've ever seen in a
simple hardware upgrade.
As to your other questions, using a retail key with an OEM install
disc or a listing of the MS media part numbers, I can't help on those.
Regards,
