Windows license upgrade trail..

[Daryn]

Hi,

 

I've recently taken over a role at a secondary school, and one duty that falls to me is to look after the software licensing aspect. I've worked in I.T for a number of years, but this is my first post in a school environment. I'm curious to know how far back the upgrade trail has to go, and how long it has to be kept for. The operating systems have been upgraded from Windows XP Pro to Windows 7 Pro, but we also have the Windows NT 4.0 licences! Could these be disposed of?

 

My predecessor warned me we could be audited at any time, hence the needed for this upgrade trail to be kept. However, I can’t seem to find any information on who does this, what they look for etc., none of which was covered in the hand over I received.

 

Any help would be gratefully received!

 

Many thanks.

[Simcfc73]

You only need a physical copy of the licenses if the machines don't have the COA stickers on. Any old NT 4.0/XP licenses will only be valid if your buying computers with no OS attached to them. Supposedly if you upgrade the MB then the COA doesn't count as its a new computer but they would have to be very anal to pick up on that.

 

I have never been audited so can't say what they look for, sorry. I was told years ago that it didn't matter about the OEMs if you have a Schools Agreement...but that wasn't from Bill Gates so ignore it.

[rom1984]

Not sure about the disposing of the NT licences. I suppose if you have the XP licence and then the upgrade invoice from XP to Win 7 then the NT licence wouldn't be needed - I'm guessing! In terms of who does the audit, we received some info from the link below which says they are working with Microsoft to target organisations inc schools as part of a "fair play campaign 2014"

 

http://www.bsa.org/anti-piracy/eufairplaycampaign

 

Might be worth directing your questions to them to see if they can offer guidance.

[tmcd35]

How old are the machines? Any machines old enough to run NT should have been scrapped decades ago! AFAIK, the upgrade license is machine specific and shouldn't be transferred between machines. When you buy new machines you are supposed to buy new upgrade licenses if required. The machines should have a OEM or Retail CoA sticker on them that the upgrade licence is upgrading from.

 

The only useful NT licences would be old retail licences (which are machine transferable) which you are using to satisfy the pre-existing OS requirement of the upgrade licence for any machines bought OS-less.