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Microsoft Ramblings

Agent Orange

Agent Orange

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Joined
Sep 24, 2008
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Location
SE MI
I've spent most of last weekend building a gaming box for a nephew who is currently enrolled at Ferris State University (ASRock 990FX, R9-280, AMD 6300 - 1 TB Toshiba - 8 GB Crucial). I possess a legal Microsoft Family Pack 3x Windows 7 Home Premium set. The package contains both, 32 & 64-bit versions. As I have installed W8 on 2 of my boxes, I have, in effect, freed up 2 of my 3 W7 licensees. This particular package requires me to do an on-line telephone verification with MS when installing, do to some unknown glitch on the 64-bit CD (never used the 32-bit version). It's not that much of a hassle, and the verification process took about 15 minutes or so, once the MS tech figured out the anomaly on my install CD. Let me cut to the chase. While he was in the remote mode on the new W7 installation, the conversation some how got around to W8/W10 verification. He said (James C - Philippines) that future releases of the current OS's will read your BIOS and create a "finger print", and if you smoke a motherboard or a HD, you will need to purchase a new license. I asked if you would be able to "deal" with MS on that and he said "maybe - depending on the situation". So, it kind of looks the good 'ole days of upgrading your PC with the same OS are all but over. The way I see it, even with your full backup, you won't be able to legally run your software on a new mobo or HD. This all may be old news to some of you that follow this sort of thing, but I'm a little upset about it. What's next, an automatic expiration and your install goes 'poof'? :stern:
 
Agent Orange said:
So, it kind of looks the good 'ole days of upgrading your PC with the same OS are all but over. The way I see it, even with your full backup, you won't be able to legally run your software on a new mobo or HD. This all may be old news to some of you that follow this sort of thing, but I'm a little upset about it. What's next, an automatic expiration and your install goes 'poof'? :stern:
Click to expand...

The 21st century is turning out to be a not so good time for anyone involved in commercial software preservation.
I keep asking my boss if I can have my title changed to 20th century software curator, because I have no idea on
how we're going to save software systems that have been created in this century.
 
First off family packs are per "household" as in family that lives with you, a nephew at some university would not count. ;)

In the good old days people upgraded their OS quite a few times before getting new hardware (DOS, Win3, Win9x era). Sometime around Win2k and especially XP people kept the OS longer and got new hardware more often. Around the same time most OS's were bundled with OEM PCs instead of being home built retail editions so MS cut got smaller per machine but the booming PC industry kept their profits expanding. PC sales are now down, people and corporations have ended up skipping a generation of OS , and people are keeping their machines longer. So now this is going to have long term affects on MS's profits so they are trying to tie their OS to the box it came with and hope those cheap pieces of junk die in a couple years so you have to get a new one with a new OS license.

Why they want to stick it to retail buyers paying full price I don't know especially when Win 7 was so easy to crack and there is no real incentive to activate your OS anyway. Everybody selling software (games and apps) want to make you pay by the year for the right to use their software, the days you actually own something are long gone. I guess you can blame the internet in every house for making it possible to tie software to remote servers to run. The internet is the new hardware dongle but much cheaper since you don't have to buy complex dongle hardware.
 
That has been the official treatment of OEM licenses. The license is tied with the system and can only switch to a replacement system if the user can convince MS that the motherboard failed. MS never really bothered to tightly enforce the license agreement; cost them more to track license reuse than the slight revenue increase from extra sales.

Microsoft has been suggesting having the home user get the privilege of joining Enterprise customers in Software Assurance, also known has subscription fees. On the plus side, the fees would allow one to use any OS on any system. Replace a system and the new system uses the old system's subscription. The downside is regular recurring fees and the fact that if only 1% of users have subscriptions go haywire, many millions of users will have non-functioning computers.

http://arstechnica.com/information-...-makes-a-nod-to-subscriptions-for-windows-10/
 
AO: What you're describing is essentially the difference between the retail and OEM versions of Windows. So I don't see how this is any different from today unless Microsoft is going to stop selling retail versions of Windows?
 
In most cases universities and corporations also have student pricing (generally one license a year) so worst case scenario your nephew can probably get the latest Microsoft Office and Windows for $30 or so. I've seen some products do that in the past, it's annoying and yeah I guess they can decide not to allow you to be able to reinstall even with the phone call explaining the other system died, etc. Not very nice business move but probably makes some extra bucks off us honest users. ..unless it's enough of a pain to gain more dishonest users.
 
Unknown_K said:
First off family packs are per "household" as in family that lives with you, a nephew at some university would not count. ;)
Click to expand...

You sound like a M$ lawyer and making the rules as you go along. I see no provisos or disclaimers on my package that indicates my nephew isn't part of my family. And nowhere on the box does it say "household".
 
I have a copy of Windows 7 "Ultimate" stashed away for the day someone requires me to be somewhat "up to date". I have put off installing until I can find the "perfect" hardware for it because even though they say Ultimate should let me change things around, I don't want to risk it.

Of course by the time I get around to installing it, there won't be a way to activate it any more...

To me, tying Windows to a particular computer is a serious risk. With older Windows, if my motherboard or something fails, I can simply plop the drive in to an identical backup machine and be back on my way instantly. Can't do that any more. :(
 
I can't speak for the future - and if it is tied to a motherboard, that's going to be a big issue, but I know in the past with Windows 7 licenses that have tripped - a quick call to MS got it reset (even OEM versions) within about 5-10 minutes.
 
SomeGuy said:
I have a copy of Windows 7 "Ultimate" stashed away for the day someone requires me to be somewhat "up to date". I have put off installing until I can find the "perfect" hardware for it because even though they say Ultimate should let me change things around, I don't want to risk it.

Of course by the time I get around to installing it, there won't be a way to activate it any more...

To me, tying Windows to a particular computer is a serious risk. With older Windows, if my motherboard or something fails, I can simply plop the drive in to an identical backup machine and be back on my way instantly. Can't do that any more. :(
Click to expand...

Ya know, you just might want to pull that copy out and install it on a SSD or a trusted HD. That way you can get it 'activated' by MS and then be good to go down the road with out a hassle.
 
I got an XPSP2 drive that I have been moving around from board to board re-activated by calling MS less than a year ago. Took less than 5 minutes.
 
Why not just a WPA kill hack? You don't have to deal with MS after that, ever.

Note that I'm not advocating stealing anything. I assume that the original copy has been legally purchased.
 
That's kinda exactly what I think the end result will accomplish also Chuck.

Re: virtual machines the BIOS ID is generally stored in the VM config also, so the risk is hard drive dies or no backup of your virtual bios ID and you'll be in the same boat. Creating a new virtual machine and importing the old hard drive file you'd run in to the non matching bios issue.
 
I've had pretty good success in moving a complete system from one mobo to another, by first removing the drivers via device manager, and then painfully combing the registry for any leftover remnants using CCleaner and other registry washing software. I haven't had a problem with the CPU or BIOS, but on the other hand, I haven't tried to move W8 or W8.1 yet. That might be a good exercise just to see what actually happens.
 
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Krille said:
AO: What you're describing is essentially the difference between the retail and OEM versions of Windows.
Click to expand...

Krille: I don't see your point. Most people purchase their OS over the counter, upgrades or complete packages. You don't normally get involved with an OEM version unless it's part of a new hardware purchase. If you recently bought a new laptop, for example, eventually you may want to upgrade your OS. After your spend your good money on the the new OS, your HD goes and you have no backup. MS may or may not help you. That's the point I'm trying to make. It appears that there is a lot of ambiguity on MS's part lately. Hejdå.
 
Agent Orange said:
Krille: I don't see your point. Most people purchase their OS over the counter, upgrades or complete packages. You don't normally get involved with an OEM version unless it's part of a new hardware purchase.
Click to expand...

When you install an OEM version of Windows onto a machine, the license is locked to that particular machine as part of the activation process. It's been like this for a long time. If you want to be able to move the license to another machine at some point in the future, then you must buy the retail version of Windows. My point was that, unless Microsoft drops the whole concept of retail versions, there's nothing different to the way it is today.

As for your laptop upgrade scenario, you can spend *some* good money on an OEM version (possibly together with some cheap hardware, although I doubt anyone cares, including Microsoft) or you can spend even *more* of your good money and get a retail version. The choice is yours. Ha en bra dag! :)
 
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