I was reading a post that had a statement about branded and stand alone OS CD's.

My question is this if I use a branded CD to install a OS on a system not made by that particular brand is or would this be a problem?

Thanks Dan for getting my brain out of the fog and working again

It is a problem on several fronts. First, if branded for another system, that means it is an OEM license that came with that other system and therefore is tied to that other system. Attempting to install it on a different system is in violation of the license agreement, and is considered stealing. So obviously, not cool.

Additionally, if branded for a Dell for example, and you attempt to install it on an HP, the branded install routine will likely fail. Finally, many branded install disks are pre-loaded with the drivers for the hardware it expects to find. So if the install manages to complete, the system may fail to boot again.

Thanks Digerati

No problem. As you can see, you will need to buy another license for Windows. If that is not in the budget at this time, there are several very capable free Linux alternatives.

The thing here is I bought this item off E-bay and I have the COA for it, but it is a branded cd, and this could actually be all my problems on my pc.

Thanks

Ah, well, just another reason to only buy from authorized retailers. There is no way anyone on ebay would be authorized to sell a branded license unless they sold you the computer it came with too.

Originally Posted by Digerati

there are several very capable free Linux alternatives.

I have never used Linux and, well you can imagine I'm a gamer. So, how well does Linux work with gaming?

It has a ways to go because the game developers are still coding primarily just for Windows. See Google: linux as a gaming platform