3 Scenarios - Getting Legal

[Frank Haber]

(Let's assume cancel still works here, and that BobB will never see the
original buried in another thread. Pardon the repost.)

I've been asked by friends for the generic method of "getting legal" with WGA
and Office 03. These are the three variants:

o One guy is using a revoked volume key for Office-kitchen-sink, whatever they
call that. He has the OEM disk for Dell's 03 Standard, and only uses Excel
and Word, so is willing to give up the illegal apps. Minimally invasive
reinstall procedure?

o Another, ditto, except his legal disk is install 2 of his Students/Teachers
03 (all he needs).

o Another, ditto, except his 03 Pro is legal, but belongs to an old employer,
who wants the disk back. He owns nothing, but will buy retail. Minimally
invasive procedure, please? What to purchase to get Word, Excel, Outlook,
Access? Don't need PP.

 

[mezzodiva]

I'm not an expert in this, and a Microsoft licensing specialist could help
for free on the phone...but here's my understanding:

In all cases, "getting legal" would be best met by uninstalling what's there
and re-installing from disks that are owned by your friends with product
keys that are legally theirs. I don't believe the actual software code
itself (that is, whether Excel came from this CD or that CD) matters so
much, but you do need to get the proper product keys in use. Cleanest would
be to uninstall what you have (now you're legal) and re-install what you own
(now you're legal and have working software).

For scenario 1, the OEM disk is tied to the machine it was installed on, so
as long as he's still on that machine, uninstall Office-kitchen-sink and use
the OEM disk to re-install. Dell would need to support any installation
issues with that.

For scenario 2, again, uninstall and re-install with the product keys that
he owns.

For scenario 3, if it belongs to his employer, then it is not "legal", in
that he can't legally install it. His employer can. That said, the retail
suites aren't even listed on Microsoft's Web site any longer (at least not
easily found).

Office 2003 isn't available in many retail channels any longer. You could
look CAUTIOUSLY at eBay for good sellers who are not selling OEM or other
scammed software. Amazon appears to have some available, as well.

Hope that helps--

 

[mezzodiva]

Oh, I forgot to mention that if the uninstall / re-install doesn't work for
some reason, you might use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility and remove
registry references to the Office installations, then re-install using the
legal product keys.

 

[Frank Haber]

Will advise the users that uninstall/reinstall is the cleanest way.

If the install is to the standard folders, is it necessary to nuke those
folders, or is all the magic in the registry? I'm going to remind these
people to save all templates. Are these left after an uninstall? How about
bundled fonts?

 

[mezzodiva]

No need to nuke folders. Never a bad idea to back up documents and
templates, but Office will (SHOULD) leave all user data intact.