I've just taken delivery of a new (my first ever not-homebuilt) Dell PC, which came with Vista Basic. As I'm never, ever, ever going to use this (I prefer to mess with the penguin), can I sell the license on? I know there are some strict rules regarding MS licensing, so I'm not to concerned with the legality of it, I just want to know if the CD that came with the Dell, can be sold along with the sticker (or a photo copy as I can't remove it without it falling into pieces) to someone else who fancies it?

Any Dell/MS experts here?

it will only install onto another dell pc, as the license key is tied into the system bios of manufacturer built pcs.

wasn't there a thread about this before?

you can send the disc back and request a refund (although Basic OEM is only like

Ah, so not much use then to anyone other than Dell users... I guess it would make a nice cheap upgrade to Dell XP owners? You reckon they would find it attractive enough?

wasn't there a thread about this before?

you can send the disc back and request a refund (although Basic OEM is only like

From what I remember from my Sys Admin days, the disc isn't a copy of Windows as such, but a System Restore disc that takes it back to factory settings. I'll have to bow to Manny's better knowledge as regards ultimate compatibility, but what I do know is that it'll be full of Dell's lovely Dell-specific drivers, so won't be any use to anyone who doesn't have the same PC. Babs's suggestion of a refund would seem to be the way forward IMO...

I wonder if Dell, "The custom PC people" would be prepared to ship a computer without Windows so I can put Linux on it ? :confused:

Found that thread: http://www.briskoda.net/forums/tech-shed/microshaft-eula-not-accepting/74677/

A tenner would do me

I'll have to see what it tells me upon first boot and give Dell a phone call.

Yeah it's a big Scam Q.

I suspect you got MS works as well, again something I doubt you'd use.

May as well just chuck the disk in the draw for an emergency.

with my new laptop i got vista, but there was no disc supplied. the installation files are pre-encoded onto a ghost partition on the hard disc which cannot be overwritten..... or so i'm told :confused:

with my new laptop i got vista, but there was no disc supplied. the installation files are pre-encoded onto a ghost partition on the hard disc which cannot be overwritten..... or so i'm told :confused:

Norton Ghost is another 'blast from my Sys Admin past'! Not sure about the "can't be overwritten" bit, though. IIRC from the setups we had, the partition was invisible to Windows, but wasn't immune the the DOS FORMAT command... Plenty to protect against accidental deletion though, unless the HDD itself goes down, of course...

I wonder if Dell, "The custom PC people" would be prepared to ship a computer without Windows so I can put Linux on it ? :confused:

you can buy a Dell PC with Ubuntu installed at the factory...:P our Dell doesn't have any "Dell specific" drivers :confused:

Hmmm, my HP desktop (now redundant) had this recovery partition - great but bloody useless if the HD goes tits up.

Surely Dell would supply a PC with no OS?

A little tip,

with your brand new vista pc, you should have recieved a dvdrom in a case which is labled as "windows anytime upgrade". This disc is infact a normal Vista DVDrom, which you can use to reload your o/s from scratch on any pc as long as you have the appropriate key.

You must also have some recovery media, my toshiba had a disk labled "product recovery", this is also just a tweaked vista install dvd with the drivers and necessary oem security certificate.

HP provide a tool in vista for you to burn the required dvd discs from the recovery partition.

our Dell doesn't have any "Dell specific" drivers :confused:

The ones we used to have at my old work had the network card on the motherboard, so when they went bang and I had to reinstall Windows, I'd be stuck with a standalone PC. The fact that you could download the driver from the Dell website was of little comfort when you couldn't get on the frikkin' internet!!! One of those things that was A Great Idea At The Time, I think...

huh? onboard NIC (and the rest) is pretty standard

Well, I booted it up and was presented with only one option "Click here to accept"... So I rebooted it from an Ubuntu CD and after a short time was presented with a nice KDE desktop

I'll call Dell tomorrow though... doesn't hurt to try, does it?

The OEM licence is specifically tied to the hardware isn't it?

Then again if it's never been activated how can it be?

The oem license key supplied by dell is tied to the slic certificate installed in the bios, if you installed it with that key onto a non dell pc, you will be prompted to activate after installing vista. The activation will fail, as the key is not designed for online activation and you vista machine will then shutdown.

huh? onboard NIC (and the rest) is pretty standard

Trust me, I'm not making it up! The drivers for the NICs on the Dell Dimension 800s and 1000s we used in those days were NOT included with Windows 2000, as we were using at the time. XP maybe, but definitely not W2k. A clean install from the Windows disk would throw up a nice collection of yellow question marks in Device Manager that were all connected to the network card. As I said, it was really comforting to know that I could download the offending driver off their website, when I couldn't get the PC in question connected to the LAN to get onto the 'net! At least there were a dozen or so other PCs in the office that I could use to track down the driver. But if it had been a home PC (i.e. with no other computer available) it could have been a right PITA (although using the built-in 56k modem or a USB modem would obviously avoid the problem in that case!) Then again, we're talking five years ago now, so maybe Dell have learned their lesson...?

I thought Hell oops i mean Dell were offering ubuntu now days?

Call me a Luddite if you like, but I'd never heard of Ubuntu before. I've had a look at the Ubuntu main site, but I was wondering, what are the benefits etc of Ubuntu over XP in the real world? If someone can sell the idea to me I'll give a whirl.

I'm not sure there is any real benefit, other than entitling the user to the sort of "I don't use Windows" smugness usually only seen on Mac users, and to a lesser extent on Mozilla users...

...who would of course be quick to point out the cost, security vulnerabilities, lack of customisability, etc. etc. associated with offspring of the Bill Gates stud farm...

I'm smug, me

I've send Dell the following email:

Hi' date='

I've just taken delivery of my Dimension C521 which came with a copy of the Microsoft Vista Basic operating system. As I will be using the Ubuntu linux operating system, I have not agreed to the Microsoft EULA and installed Ubuntu linux on the PC. Could you please forward me an address where I can send the Microsoft Vista Basic operating system CD to for a refund? Please note, I am not looking to return my PC, just the accompanying Microsoft operating system.

Kind regards[/quote']

They say they'll respond to my query in 24 hours...

KDE?? Pah, gnome!!!