Licensing + Imaging

[Guest Guest]

When my school upgraded to windows 7 pro (before my time) they bought a load of computers with OEM licences, or refurbished existing computers and got an OEM licence for them.

 

The company who did the migration work did all the installations manually - all 160 computers......charging by the hour............

 

I'm desperate, desperate to start using something like fog or WDS, but when I last used WDS my old school had bought Volume Licences for the machines so it was a case of one key to rule them all and in the darkness bind them........

 

Can anyone clarify if I can image machines if they're only OEM licensed? Everytime I've had to re-install windows I've needed to ring MS up to activate properly.

 

Could I get away with buying a single Vol Licence and using that product key on everything? As everything is already licenced for Windows 7......

 

I'm confused, and I'm getting conflicting answers from IT Companies I talk to.

[featured_spectre]

Do you happen to have a Schools Licence Agreement or a Select Agreement from Microsoft?

 

What about other software, are you licensed for it all???

 

If answer is yes to both, then go for it.

 

OEM keys generally have to match otherwise.

[plexer]

if you have an oem licence for all the machines then you can buy a volume licence and media and use that to reimage them all.

 

Ben

[plexer]

Microsoft Downgrade and Re-imaging rights for Windows 7 Pro OEM « A Microsoft Diva's Blog

 

Ben

[dhicks]

Can anyone clarify if I can image machines if they're only OEM licensed?

 

Yes - you can set each machine up and take an image of it. 160 disk images isn't really that much storage space these days, a few hundred gigabytes. Taking your time in to account, though, it's probably cheaper simply buying a volume license to cover your 160 machines.

[the_quick]

Another thing would be to created general image without license key, use sys prep and something to deploy those images, something like FOG (free and really good).