Installation & Licensing

[#1]

I have a query regarding licencing/activation of Autodesk products, and what constitutes 'significant changes' to a system.

We have an employee who has very happily consented to have his Windows Vista Business (32-bit) laptop upgraded to Windows 7 Professional.  He is running a 2012 Design Suite without problems.

What effect will an upgrade (not clean install - time constraints) have on the Autodesk software?  Is an upgrade such a significant change that it will require reactivation, or reinstallation entirely?  I have read recommendations that a licence be exported/transferred before making system changes as a safeguard, but there seems to be no hard-and-fast recommended course of action.  Transferring a licence to a "new machine" seems to be asking for problems too (or maybe this only existed with the older PLU).

Having successfully completed the quick-and-nasty Vista to 7 upgrade previously without problems and in record time, I'm interested to hear how others have achieved this and how it affected their software.  This information is always better to have before the upgrade starts.  Given this is borne of "time constraints";  if the Autodesk software is going to cause known problems, a reschedule may be in order.

Thank you,

Hannah

[#2]

You can use the License Transfer Utility to upload the license file to our servers so that you can re-import it to an newly formated computer.  You can also try to re-activate the software and it doesn't automatically activate, you can contact the Autodesk Business Center with your serial number and request code.

http://en.autodesk.ca/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=9719649&id=9830778

For WIndows upgrades, I would prefer a clean install.  I am glad that the Vista upgrade to Windows 7 was relatively harmless but be prepared for a clean install at some point in the future.

[#3]

David, thank you for your response.

While I'm aware that one can use the licence transfer utility in upgrade cases, there is a chance that the operation will be an offline one (as mentioned - quick and nasty), which I why I'm enquiring as to the effect a change in operating system has on the licence. 

While a reformatted computer requires the licence be imported or reactivated, I would like to know whether an upgraded hard disk (same disk and many of the same system files) will require reactivation or importation. Is there a consistent/expected outcome, or is this largely a case-by-case situation?

Thank you for your time,

Hannah

[#4]

To address the concerns of anyone who may have found this thread relevant to them -

The Autodesk software continued to work as expected after the OS upgrade.  The upgrade itself was not as smooth as expected, asking for a lot of uninstallations of .NET components, but none of this ended up affecting Inventor.

Thank you to David for his contribution to this thread.