An associate in my office took advantage of the MS Win 7 upgrade offer for some Vista OS PCs he purchased in September 2009 where MS will ship you a free Win 7 upgrade for Vista based PCs bought between 6/09 and 12/09. He has 3 identical PCs, but only 2 were purchased in the upgrade time window, and he was wondering if using one of the Win 7 upgrades to update 2 PCs instead of one is possible.
I told him that I thought windows checked and registered the motherboard ID of the unit somehow these days, and that this would not be allowed. I did recall however that XP allowed for three different installs/re-installs on different motherboards. How does MS handle this these days for Win 7?
You can use the DVD any number of times, but, assuming a non-corporate license key, each license key must be unique. Depending upon the version you purchase, you may be allowed to move it from machine to machine. You need to check your license. If you’re using a corporate license key, you need to keep records for when MS audit you.
Regardless of whether it’s technically possible, the Upgrade DVD comes with 1 license only, so it would be illegal if he used the 1 Product Key on 2 separate machines. The fact that the PCs are identical specifications is irrelevant to the licensing situation.