I’ve been trying to find out about my eligibility for the Windows 8 upgrade promo price of $40.
Here’s my situation:
I own 2 PC’s, both of which I built myself (I suspect this is what disqualifies me…) I own a full retail version of windows Vista for both machines, as well as two copies of windows 7 (OEM) version for both machines.
What I want to do is upgrade to windows 8 pro for my home theater PC (for Media Center) and regular Windows 8 for my main PC.
Do I qualify for the upgrades in any way? If yes, can I perform a clean install, or do I have to perform an upgrade install on a running version of windows 7?
If I don’t qualify, anyone know of a cheaper way of getting windows 8 than the OEM ($150-$110) versions?
The $40 upgrade installs Windows 8 Pro. Both of your computers run Windows 7, so they both qualify to be upgraded You can definitely install Windows 8 clean on them. But you’ll have to have already installed Windows 7 on both machines.
But, wait, you say. If I have to install Windows 7 first, doesn’t that mean that Windows 8 won’t be a clean installation? Nope. You can choose to reformat using the setup. As long as you do it after setup has already started, you can still perform a Windows 8 installation. Or, if you want to more careful, you do an “almost clean install”, which means you just do a regular upgrade, but choose the option to “Keep nothing.” All your old files will be moved to a folder called Windows.old on your Windows 8 system. After Windows 8 is installed, you can delete that Windows.old folder, or just keep whatever files you want.
To get Windows Media Center, you’ll then need to use this page, where you can scroll down and sign up to get a free license code for it. Then follow the directions below that to upgrade the appropriate copy of Windows 8.
Windows 8 does not come with a DVD player. Media Center I believe includes one, but I could be wrong. Either way, if you want DVD playback on both machines, you’ll need something that can play DVDs. A free option is VLC. Media Player Classic may also come with out-of-the-box DVD support–I’m not sure.
