windows 7 upgrade craziness...questions about pricing/upgrade keys??

[hulkster]

so the "upgrade discount" has been announced and you can get windows 7 home premium for $49 if you get the upgrade disc.  from what ive read you can do a CLEAN INSTALL using the upgrade disc and activate win 7 using an xp/vista license key.  if you bought your pc through dell or whatever this is straight forward.  if you bought the full retail version of xp or vista, its also a no brainer....but here's my question:

i have 3 old IBM ThinkCentre pc's sitting in my garage with xp license stickers on the outside of the boxes.  they are obviously oem copies that were pre-installed on the box itself.  i dont want to install win7 on those and have no plans on using those pc's.  HOWEVER what i want to know is, can i do a clean install of win7 on a custom built pc (new harddrives and such with no OS on them) and when it asks for a valid license key just put in the xp licenses from those OEM pc's? 

how does the validation work?  does it validate online before you do a clean install and like...record what kind of hardware you have    i dont know...i want to buy the $50 copies of win7 but theres no point if my oem xp keys wont work.

[Cakemeister]

I dunno, but I just bought two upgrade disks. I probably ought to buy at least one more. At release I will buy one full copy. That way I can use the full install disk and put any key I own on it.

[daywane]

check PC specks for windows 7
I doubt your older PCs can handle windows 7
do you have 2 gig of memory in each?

[hulkster]

check PC specks for windows 7
I doubt your older PCs can handle windows 7
do you have 2 gig of memory in each?

i dont think you understand.....im not going to install win7 on the old pc, i just want to use the xp key on the sticker from the old machine.  so i'll build a new pc with upgraded specs, then install win7 with the xp key from the old ibm out in the garage.

[CCM]

some good info here:

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1419245

[CCM]

So why exactly do you think that will not work?  The keys weren't tied into the hardware....

OEM keys can be hit or miss

[hulkster]

i guess i'm just worried that i'll get to the key activation screen and then put in my oem key....and it wont take it.  thats what im worried about.

[daywane]

I hope it will work for you.
I must say I have 5 PCs right hear with stickers on them. No restore disks.
All had XP home on them. I have a real XP home disk in this PC.

The code on all 5 PCs did not work with them. So....
4 have XP Pro SP2
1 has XP Gold

[TOK]

Is this how they validate now instead of just having you insert a CD/DVD of a previous edition of Windows?

[AtomSmasher]

Anyone know if it invalidates your XP license so that you can no longer install XP using that key (or at least, no longer validate it)?  I remember reading a long time ago that they were planning on doing that, but haven't seen anything on it recently.

[hulkster]

I hope it will work for you.
I must say I have 5 PCs right hear with stickers on them. No restore disks.
All had XP home on them. I have a real XP home disk in this PC.

The code on all 5 PCs did not work with them. So....
4 have XP Pro SP2
1 has XP Gold

i talked to a friend who works as a reseller for software and he said that "technically" you can use the oem license.  i mean, you could just tell MS that you are changing out the motherboard and want to use it on this *ahem* "replacement board"  .  regardless, im going to try it because i own the pc's and i own the licenses.  i should be able to do whatever the heck i want to with it.