Vista Express Upgrade?

[Surr]

I purchased a Toshiba laptop a while back that came with a free upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium. While waiting for the upgrade to arrive I have installed lots of software, including VPN access to work and other things that I am sure Vista will break. Rather than risk breaking my work connections I would rather install the Vista upgrade on my Dell that should be more than capable of running Vista and doesn't run any critical software that I couldn't do with out for the short term if their are problems. However, I don't want to spend hours installing Vista Express upgrade on my Dell just to have it not work becuase it was a Toshiba upgrade. Does anyone know if these express upgrades can be installed on a different brand of PC?

Thanks.

 

[orion23]

You should be able to install it, however, as per the license agreement, you need to un-install the copy of XP from your machine. Upgrade, right?

 

[Surr]

Originally posted by: orion23
You should be able to install it, however, as per the license agreement, you need to un-install the copy of XP from your machine. Upgrade, right?

hmm, this is the express upgrade. I have a Toshiba and a Dell both with Windows XP media center edition. The toshiba qualifed for the "free" Windows Home Premium Express Upgrade. Due multiple reasons I would rather upgrade the Dell than the Toshiba, most of all not wanting to mess up any of my work connections on the Toshiba. So, I would no longer be using the XP license on the dell, but would be on the Toshiba. So I would be using it to upgrade an XP license, just on a different PC than it was intended for. I don't think this is breaking the license agreement, but it is not exactly what it was intended for.

The real question, is would a Toshiba Upgrade disc or key somehow be tied to the hardware. Another way of asking, would Vista check the motherboard/BIOS and see it is a dell system and not a toshiba and lock it down. The upgrade and key have never been used, so the standard verification would not be a problem. I am just not sure if there is another level of verification to match machine types. I know I can try it and see, but really don't have time to spend hours installing Vista, then have to rebuild my dell back to XP.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks

 

[orion23]

Well, I signed up for about 7 different Express Upgrade licenses (family members), some from Dell, HP and 1 from Newegg.

I received most of them already and I installed Vista using my Retail Vista Disc and used the keys to upgrade each laptop / desktop.

Some desktop keys went on the laptops (wanted to do those first since those were not for gaming) and it worked out just fine!