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legalities of installing old operating systems for clients...

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First post, by kingcake

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So I've been doing more and more IT work for industrial clients. They always have DOS/Win95/Win98 PCs and never upgrade because it's running proprietary software to control million dollar equipment.

Sometimes I need to reinstall an OS or sell them a new old computer and install an old OS on it. What do you guys think about this legally?

I want to stay in Microsoft's good graces here as I have a ton of MS certifications and stuff.

If there were plenty of licenses for this old stuff on ebay I would just buy them up. But even that's kind of sketchy, as I believe the COAs are non transferable.

There's always FreeDOS, but I worry about running into weird problems with himemx/jemm386.

What would you guys do?

Reply 1 of 2, by wiretap

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It is the responsibility of the company that owns the equipment to maintain their license and software. If they don't have their license and software, they need to buy a new legitimate one to provide. Sure, you can provide it to them, but you need to provide them a legitimate one as well that comes with the real paperwork from Microsoft, whether it be physical or digital. At work, I use Visual Studio accounts (formerly MSDN) for a small amount of licenses I maintain for equipment, and also have a Microsoft Distributor/Partner network account for purchasing large amounts of keys or licenses. They have everything dating back to early DOS versions.

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Reply 2 of 2, by kingcake

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wiretap wrote on 2021-02-26, 11:51:

It is the responsibility of the company that owns the equipment to maintain their license and software. If they don't have their license and software, they need to buy a new legitimate one to provide. Sure, you can provide it to them, but you need to provide them a legitimate one as well that comes with the real paperwork from Microsoft, whether it be physical or digital. At work, I use Visual Studio accounts (formerly MSDN) for a small amount of licenses I maintain for equipment, and also have a Microsoft Distributor/Partner network account for purchasing large amounts of keys or licenses. They have everything dating back to early DOS versions.

Interesting. I've talked to MS distributors like ingram micro and they act like I'm crazy when I ask about dos/win95 etc.

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