Hi Benjamin.
The issue re a ms subs and the use of its iso's has been widely talked about on tn.
The legal standpoint in M$'s eyes, is that no it can not be done. The software downloaded, is only to be used for evaluation purposes.
What your supposed to do in the instance you quoted above, is to contact the manufacturer, and order replacement recovery media for that particular machine. Use it, and then pass those discs over to your client. As they are the clients property.
Alternatively, you can use
www.restorediscs.com, who also supply manu recovery media, at usually a lower fee than the manufacturers.
If the manufacturer no longer supports said pc, then again according to M$, you need to purchase a replacement media and replacement coa. OEM only.
What M$ does not take into account (this is my own personal opinion), is the following scenario.
The client has already purchased a licence, and coa. Say XP, on a time machine. Spec is borderline for windows vista, yet alone windows7.
Time went out of business.
Contact M$, mention the above to them, M$, will say you need to purchase a new media and licence.
Minimum cost for a windows 7 licence is around £70.00. Add on your labour rate eg £65.00. Total invoice is £135.00. The value of the machine will be a lot less than the £135 quoted, so the client will not go ahead with the repair.
Instead, they go to joe bloggs, (a pizza tech), who lives next door to them. Client tells Joe, than Benjamin form Bytesmart has told him that he needs a replacement dvd, and coa for windows 7.
Joe says, ermm hang on, that's wrong, he's lying, you do not need to do that, you have a licence here, I can install it for you, for only £50.00.
Client goes ahead with the deal, then tells all their friends and family that you have tried to rip him off. Your name would be mud in the area. All that hard earned reputation would be lost within days. You would have a very hard time getting it back again.
Whose at fault here?.
You?. Nope, your being legal (according to M$).
Manufacturer?. They went bankrupt so no longer apply.
Joe?. Possibly for not knowing the difference.
Client?. Again possibly for not knowing.
M$. A huge resounding YES.
All the above info is hidden deep within the pages of M$ website. You have to do some huge digging around to locate it all.
Reasoning behind having to use the recovery media?
Drivers and software. The recovery media, has everything ready to go. Also you as a tech are not allowed to accept the eula. That has to be down to your client.
We all know that drivers can be downloaded from multiple places. We as techs are also not allowed to remove the bloatware from a new machine. Hence part of the reasoning behind the acceptance of the eula.
I have emailed M$ on multiple occasions over this, first they replied. Now they have stopped replying. I have argued with them, till I am blue in the face. I would love to have a sit down meeting with M$ to iron out these issues, but that is not on the cards.
If it's a whitebox machine, then you can contact M$, and they will supply you with the above (for a fee naturally).
My apologies for the lengthy post, but this is a personal bug bear of mine. M$ need to have these rules out in the open. They need to tell techs, not wait for us to go looking for some obscure reference hidden somewhere in their site. They need to be open and transparent.
) that the only ISOs that need to be converted to OEM is XP. I've been told...
