Buying Windows 7 OEM from registered vendors in 2016

[Private01723]

Hi,

I'm building a new PC myself. Looking at purchasing the OS, I want to use Windows 7; retail versions are discontinued (sadly), and only OEM disks are available online from recognised vendors.

32bit Windows 7 Home Premium is about half the price of 64bit Windows 7 Home Premium. (32bit is ~£40, 64bit is ~£80)

On my current (and very old) PC, I reformatted from a Windows 7 32bit Home Premium (purchased as OEM back in 2009), to 64bit Home Premium using a USB-drive and an ISO Microsoft gave me after verifying my License Key.

My questions are:

1) Can I buy the 32bit version to get the License key, then install using the 64bit ISO? Is that supported/allowed?

2) If I were to reformat my current PC again, and install Linux on it, could I use the license key from that install on the new PC and reuse the 64bit ISO again?
(I gather I have to call Microsoft support and its not 100% likely to work, but it might save me £40-80, and money is rather tight)

Thank you

 

[Private01723]

It seems that question 2 is more or less answered for me, though that specific circumstance is not.

But does anyone have an answer for question 1?

 

[psoohoo]

I believe when you buy a license, it allow you install either a 32 or 64-bit version. Not sure if that is the case if you already activated and are trying to install the other edition. I personally never tried it so I cannot definitively say it works or not.

see http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/25969-63-using-install-instead