Un-installing Windows 7

[Greg's News]

Hi All,
I have 2 questions:

Can you un-install Windows 7?
Would doing so cause you to lose one of your license's?

I purchased the 3 license family pack of Windows 7, allowing me to install it on 3 computers. I decided to install it on my lap top for right now, and use it as sort of a test platform to see what kind of software or hardware conflicts I might encounter. I pretty much run the same programs on both my laptop and desk top. I decided to hold off on installing it on my wife's laptop for the time being.

So after installing and activing it on my laptop, I still have 2 licenses's left for use on my desk top and on my wife's desk top. But, suppose I decided for watever reason to uninstall it from my laptop. If I then reinstalled it, would I still have the remaining 2 licenses to use or would the 2nd install on the laptop burn one of the remaining 2 license's up?

I have run into a few problems on my laptop that I think will require me to uninstall Windows 7 for the time being until I can get some driver issues and whatnot cleared up.....

So can you uninstall Windows 7 without using up any of my other license's?

Thanks.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Greg.

Can you un-install Windows 7?

No. And Yes. ;^}

There is no "uninstall". But you can easily reformat the volume where it is
installed - or just delete its boot folder, \Windows.

Would doing so cause you to lose one of your license's?

No, not for a full Retail license, such as you get in the Family Pack. (The
rules are different for an OEM license, such as those for Windows
pre-installed on a new computer.)

If it has been less than 120 days since you activated the license, you
probably will be prompted to make a voice phone call to explain that you
have removed that previously-activated license from the first PC in order to
activate it on the second PC.

With the full retail license, you can activate the same license on the same
computer any number of times. To move the license to a different computer
(within 120 days) you must remove it from the first computer.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64