Vista - OEM vs Full Version

Due to a very long and unsuccessful attempt to get Office Enterprise to work
properly on a new ACER (VISTA Home Premium) computer that came c/w a
pre-installed trial version of Office 2007 as per Office technical support I
need to do a clean install of VISTA. My problem is that the only option I
have is to re-install the ACER factory load c/w the trial version and all of
the other useless stuff. I am contemplating buying either a full or oem
version of VISTA Home Premium, Format C, get rid of the hidden partition and
start from scratch. What is the difference between oem and full other than
the price.. Advice will be appreciated, this is my fourth computer but I have
never needed to do anything this drastic before.

The only real difference(besides price!) is that the OEM disk is tied to the
oringinal computer that it is installed on. In other words, if the computer
completely dies, that is the end of the OEM licence for it.
You can't transfer it to another computer.

Whereas with the full retail version, you can put it on as many computers as
you like, as long as it is installed on only one at a time.
In other words, put it on the 2nd; uninstall it from the 1st.

Also, with the OEM licence, you can not get the 64bit version, if you have
the 32bit version from microsoft for the cost of postage(approx $10), which
you can do with full, retail version.

Hope it helps.

"RichardG" wrote:

Mick

Thank you for the answer. I tend to keep my computers long past the shelf
life of the os so the OEM option is probably the best bet. If I decide to go
this route I will likley be back to seek some advice on how to do this , in
particular how to deal with the hidden partion that has a copy of the factory
load on it.

"Mick Murphy" wrote:

Richard, that is easy enough to do.
During vista install, and before formatting, you are given the opportunity
to delete existing partitions, and go back to an unpartionitioned drive.
Then you select all that space to formatt.

"RichardG" wrote:

Mick

I actually have 3 partitions c , d and hidden. d I use for backups. I would
like to retain d with my data on it. I will also have my important stuff
backed up off computer, will I have this option ? Thanks for the advice, this
is a process I havent done before.

"Mick Murphy" wrote:

You will be able to do this through disk management.

When you are ready to do it, just repost here with a Heading like: "Disk
Management working on 3 partitions????"

See you again here soon.

"RichardG" wrote:

Forgive me but are you unable to uninstall the trial version of Office &
other preinstalled stuff?
There is an MS kb article on manual uninstallation if Add/Remove fails
Once your sys is clean simply create an Image & store that safely

"RichardG" <RichardG@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1B2E8EC6-4BE8-412B-8EBA-F1E4F83E1A37@xxxxxx

Not a problem to most, but be aware that with OEM Microsoft provides no
support (except paid and updates)

"RichardG" <RichardG@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:E3404B20-26AA-4E38-9AB8-AF02E4F60E78@xxxxxx

Tried and faild , Office Teck support have been loged onto my computer 3
times and they could not solve the problem.

Richard

"DL" wrote:

You can uninstall the Office trial that came with your computer and then install the Office that you have.

As for the the hidden partition (I forgot how I did it), you may have to use a live linux distro and mark the partition as unhidden first before you can do anything with it. You can also try disk management in Vista and delete the partition and then allocate the space to either your C: or D:.

Be warned that the hidden partition contains a fresh factory copy of your computer for restore. There should be an option when you bootup for restoring your computer to original factory settings. If you did not create the image that goes there when you first got your computer and have not created restore discs, then that hidden partition cannot help you.

You don't have to install a new OS to get Office to work though.