On Tue, 06 May 2008 06:23:53 -0400, class_a wrote:

> Darrell Stec wrote:
>
>>> And sure windowses can be bought.
>>>
>>>
>> But that is the whole point. They already purchased Windows once with
>> the machine, just like I did with mine. The purchase price was built
>> in. When there are no disks and only an all or nothing recovery
>> partition then virtual machines are of no use. To use Windows they
>> must purchase a second copy on disk.
>>
>> So yes Windows can be purchased but with a VM it gets bought twice.
>
> Just install from a 'copy' of a regular Windows install disk. The
> important point, legally, is whether you have a license to use it or
> not. If one came with your original machine then you should be fine
> provided you haven't used that license to install it elsewhere due to M$
> 'one install per license' policy. The install media is fairly
> irrelevant, it's the usage license you need to worry about, which you
> already have so no need to buy a second one!

The last (1) 'official' line I heard (this was from a MS certified
licence expert) was that if the machine had originally had an OEM licence
for 'some' release of Windows, that same version could be legally run in
a VM on another OS on that machine. In other words, if I take my laptop
with XP preinstalled, dual boot it with Suse, I can then install XP in a
Suse controlled VM using the original OEM licence key in addition to the
native install. Of course, WGA will choke as it sees two different lots
of 'hardware' but MS will give me new key if I ask nicely (2).

1: Nearly a year ago - which is a LONG time in the VM world
2: except, of course, they wont, because its an OEM copy (3), so I need
to contact the system builder for all support (4)
3: Unless I'm a corp users who paid the 'upgrade' few to reregister the
OEM copy as a corp version ('corprate' licences' are really just upgrades
to OEMs, and dont actually count as a full licence. I think... (4, again)
4: Its stuff like this that made me look into switching to Linux a few
years back