VM licensing question

VM licensing question

VM licensing question QUESTION: I am running Vista Home on my PC, but I upgraded from XP. Am I free to use my XP license as a VM OS? I have bought Vista and have a separate license for that so in theory my XP license is currently wasted. - Christian E. ANSWER: It might seem that way, but actually if you upgraded your OS from XP to Vista, your XP license was incorporated into your Vista license. That's because the upgrade version of Vista costs substantially less than the full version (for example, Vista Ultimate upgrade was, at time of release, $259 as compared with the $399 full version price). Here's what the XP EULA says: "After upgrading, you may no longer use the product that formed the basis for your upgrade eligibility." However, if you had wiped out XP completely and installed the full version of Vista, then your XP license would allow you to install it on another computer, which could be a VM. Here is the pertinent part of the EULA: "You may move the product to a different Workstation computer. After the transfer, you must completely remove the product from the former Workstation computer." This applies to both the Home and Pro editions of XP. (Note: Although this question pertains to the XP license, we find that there are a lot of Vista users who find themselves wondering about this after upgrading so we're addressing it here in the Vista newsletter).