Last year I bought a laptop that included Windows Vista Home Premium, OEM version. As I bought it for my linux work and am not fond of Vista, I would like to replace it by Windows XP or make a Virtual machine that runs XP.
Is it possible to legally downgrade my Vista version to XP without paying for an extra XP licence? There is some text in the Vista license about downgrading but I cannot understand it.
Can I just use my Vista license number for XP?
I'm talking here about how to do this in a legal way, not technically. I do not care for the data that's now on my system, I just as well would like to do a clean reinstall.
(I do not like Vista because of the strict administrator policies and the memory overhead, but that's not what this question is about.)
Answer
According to official Microsoft document from http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/f/4/5f4c83d3-833e-4f11-8cbd-699b0c164182/royaltyoemreferencesheet.pdf
The OEM vesions of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate include downgrade rights to Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Customers may not downgrade to Windows 2000 Professional from Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate. No downgrade rights are included in other Windows Vista products in the OEM channel
Translation: Legally you can downgrade OEM versions Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. Other version cannot be legally downgraded.
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