By Woody Leonhard
3 December 2009. Windows 7 is a great product with relatively few foibles, but there's one major Win7 mess that has me seeing red.
The licensing terms for the new version of Windows are inconsistent, inaccurate, and downright inane — assuming you can wade through Microsoft's legalese in the first place.
If you're one of the millions of people considering a Win7 upgrade, you need to distinguish the upgrades you can do from the upgrades Microsoft's license wants you to do. The overlap between what's possible and what's "permissible" leaves a lot of gray area.
Unfortunately, there are no clear and simple answers to many important questions. These include the validity of dual-boot Win7 configurations, the use of upgrade discs to perform a clean install, and the ability to upgrade to Win7 a PC that's currently running a pirated copy of XP or Vista.
Here's the nutshell version of where things stand on these issues at present. (You'll find the official end-user license agreement for your version of Windows on Microsoft's Legal and Corporate Affairs page as a PDF download.)
Dual-booting Windows 7 may violate the license
You know about dual-booting, right? Since the dawn of time, Windows has allowed you to install more than one operating system on a PC and choose which OS to use at boot-up. Dual-booting is a good way to migrate from an older operating system to a newer one. I've used the technique for years whenever a new OS has come around.
For example, once you set a machine to dual-boot, you can use the new OS until you run into trouble — for example, you forget a password or can't remember an e-mail setting. You just boot into the old OS and use it long enough to jot down the missing information. Once you're sure you no longer need the old version, you delete it: safe, simple, and easy.
I first jumped down the Win7 licensing rabbit hole when I realized you aren't supposed to use an upgrade version of Windows 7 to create a dual-boot system. Er, well, more precisely, it's physically possible to use an upgrade version of Win7 to create a PC that will dual-boot Win7 with XP or Vista. But the licensing terms say you can't do so.
This is one of those areas where verbiage indicates you shouldn't, but the software and all of its supporting documentation show that you can. It's also one of the areas where the rules have changed. Dual-booting with an upgrade copy of XP was perfectly kosher. The licensing language changed with Windows 7. (Actually, it changed with Vista, but nobody seems to have noticed.)
The crux of the matter lies in the following sentence in Windows 7's EULA:
"15. Upgrades. To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligible for the upgrade. Upon upgrade, this agreement takes the place of the agreement for the software you upgraded from. After you upgrade, you may no longer use the software you upgraded from."
Yes, you read that correctly. As soon as you install the upgrade version of Windows 7, Microsoft claims that your license for the existing version of Windows goes kaput and you may no longer use the software you upgraded from. While you can create a dual-boot system — heck, it's easy to do so, using the upgrade DVD — under a strict reading of the EULA, you aren't supposed to boot it up.
The Windows 7 installer will automatically set up the entire dual-boot infrastructure, making it easy for you to dual-boot. But the license says you can't still use the previously purchased and installed operating system.
This leads to all sorts of craziness. For example, a friend of mine wanted to dual-boot the 32-bit version and the 64-bit version of Windows 7. This would allow him to test 64-bit drivers but fall back to 32-bit if he encountered a problem.
He bought the Windows 7 Upgrade Family Pack, whose license permits three installs. To dual-boot, he simply needed to install Win7 twice. But he was a bit, uh, disconcerted to discover that dual-booting with the 32-bit and 64-bit versions theoretically negates the license of whichever Win7 version was installed first.
I still can't believe that Microsoft made such a ridiculous rule. I'm amazed there hasn't been a mass uprising of Win7 users brandishing pitchforks and blazing torches as they threaten to ride the legal beagles out of Redmond on a rail. But no. In fact, I've hardly heard a peep about this matter in the trade press.
The simple fact is that a dual-boot system created using the upgrade version of Win7 works fine. Microsoft may say your license for the original software gets tossed into the bit bucket, but I've never heard of anybody failing a Windows Genuine Advantage check on an old XP or Vista system that's part of a Win7 dual-boot hookup.
I don't know how Microsoft could tell which old system you had. I don't know of any mechanism Microsoft could use to disable a running copy of Windows 7 or prevent it from receiving critical updates. In short, the rule's there, but it may in fact be legally unconscionable as well as unenforceable.
The install-over-itself trick skirts the rules
In his Feb. 1, 2007, Top Story, editorial director Brian Livingston described how to clean-install Windows Vista using only the upgrade CD. Thunder and lightning descended from a few outraged spokespersons who felt that such a trick shouldn't be widely publicized. After all, Microsoft has a right to charge the price it wants, and if it restricts the cheaper upgrade version to systems that already have a valid copy of Windows, it's Microsoft's decision, right?
Well, not exactly. Microsoft can say whatever it likes. But by the same token, Microsoft purposefully built the backdoor into Windows so it could be used. The Redmond company explained in its own published documents how to use the trick to install the upgrade edition on a new, bare hard drive. With Vista installed in this way, as Brian noted, the Vista EULA specifically lists Vista itself as a "qualifying operating system" that would pass validation tests by upgrading Vista over itself. This was all deliberately programmed in by Microsoft and retained as part of Service Pack 1.
Fast forward two and a half years and we find the same backdoor in Windows 7. Microsoft even enhanced the trick by adding a command line that eliminates the need to run setup twice.
As I explained in my Nov. 12 Top Story, you can use the Win7 upgrade DVD to clean-install Windows 7 in precisely the same way Brian demonstrated in 2007 for Vista.
Legions of 'Softies have known about the trick for years, and it still works. Microsoft didn't close the hole in Vista SP1, and it didn't close it in Windows 7. It doesn't look like a "trick" any more. The only possible conclusion is that the clean-install method is included by Microsoft so its tech-support people can resolve customers' setup problems quickly and cheaply.
Aside from the EULA, what does Microsoft tell Windows 7 buyers about installing the upgrade DVD on a clean hard drive? The company's official upgrade booklet — called "Welcome to Your PC, Simplified" — provides an answer at the bottom of page 6:
"If your PC doesn't have an operating system currently installed, insert the Windows 7 installation disc before turning on your computer. Setup should start automatically."
That's very specific advice, and it carries no admonition whatsoever restricting the upgrade to any particular machine.
If this is a violation of the EULA, shouldn't Microsoft have removed by now the technique that the company created and documented so many years ago?
Microsoft doesn't do so because it doesn't want to.
No trick needed to upgrade a pirated OS to Win7
As part of my pursuit of truth, justice, and the American way, I tested a Windows 7 upgrade DVD on a PC that I knew had a pirated copy of Windows XP. This particularly sorry piece of hardware had never seen a licensed copy of Windows in its life. The PC might as well have been flying a skull-and-crossbones flag and displaying its "You may be the victim of software counterfeiting" notice like a badge of honor.
Since the machine didn't really have much of an OS to begin with, I decided to take Microsoft's advice for installing Win7 on a PC with no operating system at all. I booted the PC from a genuine, paid-for upgrade DVD. The Win7 installer kicked in with no problem. During installation, I typed in the activation key. Win7 activated immediately once I was connected to the Internet. Go figger.
It would be trivially easy for Microsoft to have the installer scan for "nongenuine" copies of Windows and scold the upgrader. But no — the upgrade proceeded as slick as could be.
Now that the formerly swashbuckling PC has a genuine copy of Windows 7, is there any indication that I broke any EULA provisions? More to the point, does anybody at Microsoft really care? There are millions of pirated copies of Windows out there. Isn't getting them qualified as genuine a good thing for everybody?
Seems like it is to me.
