Motherboard Replacements and Windows OEM EULAs

If you decide to replace the motherboard in your computer, should you have to pay Microsoft again for the OS that came with the system? Well, in Redmond they think so, and that probably doesn't come as much of a surprise. What I do find a bit surprising is that Microsoft has chosen not to inform end users, not even in the darkest depths of the Windows EULAs, of this policy. Instead, computer manufacturers hav

If you decide to replace the motherboard in your computer, should you have to pay Microsoft again for the OS that came with the system? Well, in Redmond they think so, and that probably doesn't come as much of a surprise. What I do find a bit surprising is that Microsoft has chosen not to inform end users, not even in the darkest depths of the Windows EULAs, of this policy. Instead, computer manufacturers have just quietly been told that, hey, that's the way it's going to be.

A reader who is a system builder under the Microsoft Partner Program recently grew concerned over what his and his customers' rights are under the Vista EULA if they want to replace a motherboard. Comments that he had seen in system builder discussion groups seemed to indicate that if the end user wants to upgrade the motherboard - a common enough desire these days given what a memory pig Vista's turned out to be - the system builder must make the customer pay for another Vista license. The reader contacted Microsoft's partner group and was told that, yes indeed, a new motherboard requires a new license.

This caused the reader to wonder if his customers are being treated the same under this policy as a Dell or HP customer would be. "Doesn't the End-User's license always read the same whether a Tier 1 or a System Builder makes the computer?" the reader wrote. "I know the Tier 1's have different rights than we system builders do, but do their users have different rights, too? I say all this because when Dell had that big recall over swelling/leaking capacitors, I was on a crew that subcontracted with Dell's contractor to replace 150 motherboards and hard drives. As I read what Microsoft is saying, if these had been MY computers the company had bought, they'd have also had to buy 150 Full Retail copies of Windows! Dell certainly didn't send any additional licenses of Windows to that customer."

In researching the reader's questions about this, I found a number of discussions referencing materials on Microsoft's OEM website that confirm what the reader was told by saying that an "upgrade of the motherboard is considered to result in a 'new personal computer' to which Microsoft OEM operating system software cannot be transferred from another computer." Not being an OEM myself though, I found I was unable to a Microsoft page that described this policy. If Microsoft is telling its OEMs this, shouldn't it also be telling the OEMs' customers?