Windows Vista OEM upgrade

[bcuk]

Hi,
Just recieved an upgrade from Acer (finally) that was for a machine I purchased for my parents. Now they're OK with XP so don't want to confuse them by throwing vista onto the machine so can I use this OEM on any machine as the discs say on them that they are only for use on a qualifying acer PC. Help much appreciated.

[marcode]

if its an oem disk, isnt it just like a recovery disk to load the OS off the recovery partition on the HD?

i could be talking pish, but thats all you could do with the last oem OS i had.

unless its an actuall OS installation disc, you aint gonna be able to install it on anything else.

[bcuk]

No it's a weird 2 disk pack. First disk is an Acer upgrade disk which when inserted into my machine errors and says "Not a valid acer pc" but the second disc autoruns and has the usual Vista compatability screen. I've not long formatted my current PC so looks like I'll be waiting till next reinstall and giving it a try to see if it takes the key.

Thanks for the quick reply by the way.

[apllrd]

done this with a dell pc, you could try plugging your hard drive into the acer pc, installing vista then putting the hard drive back into your machine then re-installing all the drivers for your mobo etc

[Northernbloke]

rather than go the "acer" way - i'd try something else first.

Download a copy of vista home from t'internet and use that to install Vista and use the product key from the Acer pack. If that doesn't work use the downloaded disc to install windows without entering any key - that will install a 30 day trial then boot it up and go to the activation screen - there's an option on there to change product key - enter the acer key and see if it'll allow it to activate.

That way you might avoid any of the pre-installed stuff from acer that you don't want

[apllrd]

i think the key will be tied to the acer brand like dell and fujitsu siemens models, worth a try though.

[karlos130]

I just got mine from dell..didnt wanna mess with my PC (dell) so put onto lappy... first disc (prepare for vista) said the lappy wasnt compatible so tried second disc the (install disc) and worked a treat!!

So the answer i would say was yes...

[bcuk]

That seems the same set up as my disks. When you installed Vista was it a clean OEM or was it full of Dell crap?

[karlos130]

Clean OEM, no dell stuff was put on.... the lappy had a XP *cough* media centre edition and it even went on top of that no problems

[bcuk]

Cool mate. Thanks for the replys. Mucho appreciated.