Vista Family Discount Key Problems

[RebateMonger]

I bought my two "Family Discount" keys last month. Haven't actually USED them. But I figured that fifty dollars would always be a good deal for Home Premium.

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Historically, when you upgraded an OEM version, you end up with an upgraded OEM license. When you upgraded a Retail version, you then had an upgraded Retail license.

You should be able to ("legally") move your OEM Vista Upgrade IF you move it to another PC that ALREADY has a "legal" copy of XP. You'd have to uninstall Vista from the original PC. But you can't "move" the Vista license to a "bare" PC because you can't move the underlying OEM XP license.

Once you remove Vista from the original PC, you should be able to use the Vista Upgrade to upgrade A DIFFERENT XP PC (that has a pre-exising XP license, either OEM or Retail).

But, like many Microsoft licensing issues, I don't believe there's an "official" answer. But who knows, maybe it's in the Upgrade's EULA?

 

[Arkaign]

Man, seems sort of like Microsoft is having problems like Sony has had the last few years. This rabid, customer-punishing activation/decativation BS is a crap way to treat your paying customers, and does NOTHING to punish/persecute actual pirates, who will circumvent this crap anyway.

 

[fierydemise]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Man, seems sort of like Microsoft is having problems like Sony has had the last few years. This rabid, customer-punishing activation/decativation BS is a crap way to treat your paying customers, and does NOTHING to punish/persecute actual pirates, who will circumvent this crap anyway.

I disagree, I tend to try and give companies the benefit of the doubt so I am inclined to believe this a a mistake albeit a big one at that. If you are referring to having to activate your software I don't see what the problem is, generally speaking activation isn't a real hassle, in most cases you enter your activation key wait a minute and your done. If you change your hardware its a 3 maybe 5 minute tops phone call. In this case it is causing problems but most likely it has nothing to do with the activation system itself its a big screwup somewhere in the chain of command. This is different from the Sony rootkit debacle where the copy protection scheme was directly responsible for the problems it caused and it was intended to make problems for consumers.

 

[Puffnstuff]

MS has been releasing one crap update after another for vista. One of the most famous judging from all of the posts over at the ms support forums is for kb 925902 which is rendering valid vista installs invalid. I fell victim to this update however I rebooted off the dvd and used system restore to get myself back to where I was before the update. I've also experienced numerous problems with ms hardware the latest of which was with the wireless laser mouse 6000 which would freeze up on system startup. I had to reboot numerous times before it would work. I became frustrated with it and replaced it with a logitech mx revolution wireless mouse which works right all the time just like it's supposed to.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Man, seems sort of like Microsoft is having problems like Sony has had the last few years. This rabid, customer-punishing activation/decativation BS is a crap way to treat your paying customers, and does NOTHING to punish/persecute actual pirates, who will circumvent this crap anyway.

I disagree, I tend to try and give companies the benefit of the doubt so I am inclined to believe this a a mistake albeit a big one at that. If you are referring to having to activate your software I don't see what the problem is, generally speaking activation isn't a real hassle, in most cases you enter your activation key wait a minute and your done. If you change your hardware its a 3 maybe 5 minute tops phone call. In this case it is causing problems but most likely it has nothing to do with the activation system itself its a big screwup somewhere in the chain of command. This is different from the Sony rootkit debacle where the copy protection scheme was directly responsible for the problems it caused and it was intended to make problems for consumers.

I guess it's just a question of how much you value your time. I mean, through no fault of their own, customers who paid in full for a legal copy of Windows have to

(A)- Stop what they were doing

(B)- Get their phone out and call Microsoft

(C)- With varying degrees of English skills on the other end, engage in an inane back and forth of sequences of characters, after being grilled on stupidly obvious questions (on how many computers is this copy of Windows installed upon?)

(D)- Finally get Windows activated/reactivated

If you value your time, it seems like a helluva way to blow it talking to a call center just to run the software you bought the license for, and are attempting to use legally.

As said before, and ignored :

Pirates are unaffected by these measures, they just circumvent them anyway

This punishes the average joe customer who just so happens to flip one of the many trapdoors which yank your activation out from under you under seemingly arbitrary circumstances.

 

[fierydemise]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: fierydemise
I disagree, I tend to try and give companies the benefit of the doubt so I am inclined to believe this a a mistake albeit a big one at that. If you are referring to having to activate your software I don't see what the problem is, generally speaking activation isn't a real hassle, in most cases you enter your activation key wait a minute and your done. If you change your hardware its a 3 maybe 5 minute tops phone call. In this case it is causing problems but most likely it has nothing to do with the activation system itself its a big screwup somewhere in the chain of command. This is different from the Sony rootkit debacle where the copy protection scheme was directly responsible for the problems it caused and it was intended to make problems for consumers.

I guess it's just a question of how much you value your time. I mean, through no fault of their own, customers who paid in full for a legal copy of Windows have to

(A)- Stop what they were doing

(B)- Get their phone out and call Microsoft

(C)- With varying degrees of English skills on the other end, engage in an inane back and forth of sequences of characters, after being grilled on stupidly obvious questions (on how many computers is this copy of Windows installed upon?)

(D)- Finally get Windows activated/reactivated

If you value your time, it seems like a helluva way to blow it talking to a call center just to run the software you bought the license for, and are attempting to use legally.

As said before, and ignored :

Pirates are unaffected by these measures, they just circumvent them anyway

This punishes the average joe customer who just so happens to flip one of the many trapdoors which yank your activation out from under you under seemingly arbitrary circumstances.

Really you don't have to stop what you're doing because usually reactivation is only required after a system upgrade (generally a major one) and it has been my experience that after doing a major system upgrade you aren't doing all that much. Also in my experience it takes 10 minutes at the absolute maximum and usually it takes 3-5 minutes, I do value my time but 3-5 minutes isn't a big deal for me, if you upgrade your system more regularly then I do then I could see the time starting to add up but it still doesn't amount to all that much.

That said I agree with you, generally DRM only effects the average consumer and generally speaking it is a real hassle but as copy protection schemes go Microsoft's is relatively unobtrusive and I'll take it over just about anything else out there.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: fierydemise
I disagree, I tend to try and give companies the benefit of the doubt so I am inclined to believe this a a mistake albeit a big one at that. If you are referring to having to activate your software I don't see what the problem is, generally speaking activation isn't a real hassle, in most cases you enter your activation key wait a minute and your done. If you change your hardware its a 3 maybe 5 minute tops phone call. In this case it is causing problems but most likely it has nothing to do with the activation system itself its a big screwup somewhere in the chain of command. This is different from the Sony rootkit debacle where the copy protection scheme was directly responsible for the problems it caused and it was intended to make problems for consumers.

I guess it's just a question of how much you value your time. I mean, through no fault of their own, customers who paid in full for a legal copy of Windows have to

(A)- Stop what they were doing

(B)- Get their phone out and call Microsoft

(C)- With varying degrees of English skills on the other end, engage in an inane back and forth of sequences of characters, after being grilled on stupidly obvious questions (on how many computers is this copy of Windows installed upon?)

(D)- Finally get Windows activated/reactivated

If you value your time, it seems like a helluva way to blow it talking to a call center just to run the software you bought the license for, and are attempting to use legally.

As said before, and ignored :

Pirates are unaffected by these measures, they just circumvent them anyway

This punishes the average joe customer who just so happens to flip one of the many trapdoors which yank your activation out from under you under seemingly arbitrary circumstances.

Really you don't have to stop what you're doing because usually reactivation is only required after a system upgrade (generally a major one) and it has been my experience that after doing a major system upgrade you aren't doing all that much. Also in my experience it takes 10 minutes at the absolute maximum and usually it takes 3-5 minutes, I do value my time but 3-5 minutes isn't a big deal for me, if you upgrade your system more regularly then I do then I could see the time starting to add up but it still doesn't amount to all that much.

That said I agree with you, generally DRM only effects the average consumer and generally speaking it is a real hassle but as copy protection schemes go Microsoft's is relatively unobtrusive and I'll take it over just about anything else out there.

Your position is well said, and I respect your stance. I get annoyed with stuff like this pretty easily, but it's hardly the worst of the activation schemes out there, I'll totally acknowledge that.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: fierydemise
That said I agree with you, generally DRM only effects the average consumer and generally speaking it is a real hassle but as copy protection schemes go Microsoft's is relatively unobtrusive and I'll take it over just about anything else out there.

Like most everybody, I HATE copy protection. But I can see why Microsoft thought it had to do something about the wholesale copying of its OS. ===> I admit having installed a few more copies of Windows 98 than I had licenses for (not professionally...but for friends and family).

MS' Activation has been pretty benign so far (if you have a "legal" copy of your software). I've NEVER seen a "bad call" on the part of the Activation/WGA process. Well, I do remember one day after an update that WGA said my (fully licensed) copy of XP was "illegal". But a reboot fixed the problem. I see a LOT of computers in a lot of different offices, and I haven't run across any other problems with WGA/Activation. So far. The bulk of the problems with Activation/WGA seen on these Forums are issues with OEM transfers that violate the EULA, where many folks aren't aware of the rules they "agreed to" when they bought their PC and "Hit Any Key to Agree....".

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well I have the $400 retail ultimate and I've had 3 instances now after an update where my install was invalidated. Rolling it back via system restore and turning off auto updates seems to be working at the moment. My other two legitimate vista installs are a mixed bag. One machine has had zero problems and my son has all kinds of crap on it. The other on my oldest sons machine has had similar problems to mine with the key being invalidated several times. Understandably I'm frustrated like many other users who paid their money to ms only to be greeted by numerous problems. I was an early adopter of xp pro and I never had problems like this with it. It was the most stable out of the box os I've ever used from ms. MS desperately needs to release sp1 to correct all of the problems in vista to at least make it a usable os to the masses. I get at least 1 bsod daily and it is annoying at best. I'm afraid to do any real work on it because I don't want to lose data when it decides to crap out on me without warning. When I work in office now I set it to back up every 2 minutes to minimize lost data. I'm very disappointed with vista especially considering how much it cost in the first place.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Puffnstuff
I was an early adopter of xp pro and I never had problems like this with it.

I remember being really disappointed with XP and remember having BSOD screens with my first install, as well as HORRIBLE compatibility problems with common software. I remember having to throw away printers and scanners that were no longer supported under XP. And I remember games that didn't work under XP.

No, I don't think that the whole Vista "package" (including hardware, software and drivers) is quite 'ready-for-prime-time". There are many situations where I wouldn't advise upgrading at this time.

But Microsoft has too much invested not to get it fixed. (Assuming that the amazingly-complicated DRM scheme mandated by the media industry doesn't cause the whole thing to collapese."

And, yeah, I think that Microsoft's Updates really suck lately. I've had to disable "Microsoft Updates" on several client PCs so far, since it's made those PCs non-functional. I spent a couple of years preaching the value of Windows Updates and Microsoft Updates and it's worrisome to have to turn them back off again.

 

[imported_Edwood]

Anyone able to install the $50 Vista Home Premium Family Discount Key on another computer at a later point? Or is the Family Discount Keys "married" to one hardware set forever, like OEM versions of Vista? (I'm not talking about installing one key on multiple machines at the same time)

I wish Microsoft would implement a "deactivation" feature like Adobe where you can plan to upgrade your computer hardware and migrate your activation without having to call in every time.

-Ed

 

[VirtualLarry]

Does anyone know if the family discount keys are for 64-bit or 32-bit, or will they work for both? (I've not installed Vista yet, so I don't know.)

It would be wonderful if I could get two copies of Home Premium 64-bit for $50 each.

Also, is the problem with the invalid keys that MS was sending out fixed yet?

 

[imported_Edwood]

Supposedly you just use your 64 Bit Ultimate disc when installing your Family Discount Home Premium.

But I still want to know if the Family Discount Keys are like OEM where you can activate it only once on a single computer.

-Ed