Buying Windows 2000 licenses? And usage.

Rand_alThor

Ok I realise this could skirt pretty close to warranting a ban so I'm going to try and be careful but I need an answer/help here or else a lot of work over the last few months will be wasted. So here we go;

Right, I've been collecting and building an assortment of old, secondhand PCs for use in my aunt's school up on Long Mile Rd (if you check back on adverts you see my requests for parts). Basically I have 9 built that are either on site (unused as yet) or waiting for final touching up before I deliver them. Bar one thing; Windows licenses.

I've been collecting building with an aim to get PCs that can run Windows 2000 but now that I've gone looking for licenses from MS and a BT purchasing contact I know, I've been told that I can buy full priced licenses for XP (with only maybe 2 PCs will be able to run) or possibly get discounts if I can provide info from previous Windows versions used on the PCs.

But regardless, 2000 seems to be slipping away.

Does anyone know where valid licenses can be bought? And what would be legal? Say if I have a Dell that was bought and has a valid XP license but now I have it running 2000. Is that legal? If I do get these discounted product keys can I use an older version of Windows in place of the one actually purchased?

I'll try ring MS again tomorrow but last time they just told me to go to a reseller. Any help would be great because if I have to take the PCs back I think I'm gonna cry.

Cheers

seamus

Doesn't the windows XP Pro licence give the holder the right to install any Pro OS that came before, i.e. Win 2k and NT4?

MS also tend to have educational programmes that allow you to buy discounted licences for educational use. If my above assertion is true, you may be able to get a number of XP Pro licences at a discounted rate from MS and then based on them, install Win2k on the PCs.

If/When you replace the old hardware with newer stuff, you could transfer the XP licence to the newer machine and install XP.

Rand_alThor

To be honest thats what I would have thought but the BT guy I've been talking to has told me (after first suggesting it) that I can't get Edu license packs and also said that he didn't think the backwards licensing worked.

Thanks for the post and keep them coming but hopefully I'll be able to get some 'official' answers out of MS tomorrow.

Capt'n Midnight

Beware upgrading old licenses. If you upgrade an OEM license then your shiny new license is bound to the old machine.

If it's a Dell you can see what OS shipped by putting the tag in on the web site. Otherwise you are relying on the COA sticker on the machine or some nice tech support looking the serial for you.

downgrade rights vary , it's not carte blanche , one notable example was that windows 2000 server didn't allow you to run NT4
VIsta Business / XP PRO will allow you to use windows 2000 pro
Vista home / XP home won't
OEM licenses won't cover any other machine except the one they came on.


What is the intended use of the PC's ?
if you have broadband and just browsing and word/excel then ubuntu is free

perhaps look for retail licenses on ebay ?

Static M.e.

As kinda mentioned you could qualify for Educational licences but you need to sort out all the paper work first.

I often find that going to MS directly doesn't get you the best answers. Try and ring the guys at micromail.ie (Nothing to do with me, I just use them and find them very helpfull) anyway they are MS partners and were very helpful when I had a licening problem recently.

On a seperate note, do you know that all the schools can apply for a computer grant worth 2k or so, might be worth checking out.

And one more thing, I have some Cisco 1721 Routers if they would help you in anyway.

@Capt'n Midnight, just noticed your link, I'll give those guys when Im back in work, on holidays atm so away from office.

also Rand_alThor I have a bunch of old dells due to be scraped in the coming weeks, we give them to Rehab (who you should also contact) who try and use them for spare parts, anyway if you need anything specific let me know and I can always have a look.

Pm me if you need too, kinda away from the PC studying atm

Rand_alThor

Well, I talked to MS and things are looking better. They actually have several programs for this kind of thing (just fairly well hidden so that even the MS sales rep didn't know to suggest them directly).

They are;
The freshstart program; for donated P3s specifically for schools
And two refurbishment programs, MAR (Microsoft Authorised Refurbishment).

The first looks particularily promising.

@Capt'n Midnight;
Yeah I'm unfortunately aware of the constraints when upgrading. It's a bit rediculous though. To upgrade you officially need, not only the valid COA sticker on the case, but also the purchase invoice. Now who is going to have that for an old P3 pc even if you're the original buyer? And not likely anyone would pass it on with a PC.

I did try to convince them to run with Ubuntu for a while but they main problems were that they can barely use windows as it is and they already have a crappy windows 98 and (a very few) 2000 lab so for file transfers it'd be messy (unless Ubuntu (linux distribs)) reliably support FAT or NTFS and I just missed that integration.

@Static M.e.
Cheers for the offers. I'll have a look and see if I need anything. The Dells might be handy alright depending on whether they're full working PCs and what specs (P3 or below would actually be better considering this MS Freshstart program (never thought I'd ask for that).

Thanks again.

Static M.e.

The PC's wouldn't be fully working, probably already scavanged for parts for fixing other PC's, no ram for definaite anyway but probable have cases, motherboards and processors. You should try and get together some sort of list and I could email it around to a few people see if they have anything..

Capt'n Midnight

Rand_alThor wrote:

To upgrade you officially need, not only the valid COA sticker on the case, but also the purchase invoice.

:rolleyes: FFS, the whole point of OEM was that it wasn't transferrable, ever. The only way would have been to incorporate it in software assurance in the first 90 days or to have got a windows refund. And their records should show that. Having a PO doesn't rule out either.

I did try to convince them to run with Ubuntu for a while but they main problems were that they can barely use windows as it is and they already have a crappy windows 98 and (a very few) 2000 lab so for file transfers it'd be messy (unless Ubuntu (linux distribs)) reliably support FAT or NTFS and I just missed that integration.

Fat32 since day one
NTFS is fine read/write in Ubuntu 7.x
older versions were read only

But you don't need to worry about the file system for file transfers since you are looking at the share. In the same windows 95 can connect to server with NTFS or Novell format drives

To connect to a windows PC , you need to create a mount point
ie. you make a folder in /media or /mnt and when you connect to the remote share that's where the files will appear to be


sudo bash you need permissions to do stuff
type in the linux password
mkdir /media/98
mount -t smbfs -o username=joe.bloggs //pcname/share /media/98
type in the windows share password
konqueror /media/98 - to open the share in a window


Others
dir /media/98 ubuntu knows dir
ls -s /media/98 if you don't like dir