Buying a second hand copy of Vista upgrade

[Tan1963]

After 10 years of XP I now have to upgrade my OS as some new software won't run on XP i.e. Lightroom 4. I've decided to buy a second-hand copy off ebay.

The question is: If I'm buying a second-hand upgrade disk will it activate as I assume it has already been installed on someone else's pc?

 

[hang-the-9]

ebay is a bad place to get OS licenses from. If it's a real copy (probably a 30% chance of that) and it's not an OEM license, and the person selling it wiped his old PC, you can use it.

Get a new Windows 7 license instead if your computer hardware has 7 drivers.

 

[Tan1963]

In the end I went ahead and bought the upgrade. When I tried to activate it on-line it came back as all ready registered. However, it gave me the option to activate by phone. Which I did and it worked perfectly.

 

[hang-the-9]

In the end I went ahead and bought the upgrade. When I tried to activate it on-line it came back as all ready registered. However, it gave me the option to activate by phone. Which I did and it worked perfectly.

That's because it was probably used already. I'd expect some issues with your setup soon when MS does license checks.

 

[JDFan]

That's because it was probably used already. I'd expect some issues with your setup soon when MS does license checks.

+1 -- That's the problem with second hand copies -- you know someone else has seen the key and could at any time post it to the internet or decide to use it themselves at which time your license suddenly refuses to activate any more -- not worth the savings when you constantly have to worry if your system is gonna stop working each time MS sends out an update !

 

[Tan1963]

As it turns out I'm finding Vista not as fast or as stable as XP so I'm thinking of reverting back anyway.

 

[hang-the-9]

As it turns out I'm finding Vista not as fast or as stable as XP so I'm thinking of reverting back anyway.

XP or Windows 7 as I suggested in my first post 🙂

 

[Tan1963]

I think it will have to be back to XP as I use Adobe CS2 and it doesn't seem to be compatible with Windows 7.

And yes, you were right hang-the-9.

Doh!