New hard drive vista reinstall and activation

My laptop is a hp dv6000 with 32 bit vista home premium preinstalled from the store. I never upgraded a laptop before so I don't know what to expect. Are all vista preinstalled systems already activated and do they use the OEM key or the product key on the bottom of the laptop? Recently my original hard drive failed and had no other choice expect to upgrade to a new one. My laptop came with the windows anytime upgrade disc so I used that to clean install vista home premium. Would the user recovery discs work instead on a new empty hard drive? When it asks for the product key the first time, I entered it in using the key on the bottom of the laptop. After everything was complete it said "3 days until automatic activation" and had the OEM key listed, not the one on the bottom of the laptop. I reactivate again using the sticker on the bottom on the laptop and it said "windows is activated", but it still had the OEM key listed. Did I enter the right key both times? Would there be any difference using the OEM key instead? Now about the recovery discs, if the "swsetup" folder was deleted before creating the discs will it still be on the disc even though it's suppose to be a factory image? Will I get the recovery partition and quick play if I reinstall again?

 

You probably entered the key right both times. I have not activated using the key on the bottom, so can not say for sure, but if it's activated, don't worry about it. If you reinstall using the recovery disks, it should restore swsetup along with the recovery partition and quickplay. It will also install all the bloatware that you avoided by using the upgrade disk.

If your system is working fine, I would not re-install using the restore disks. All the drivers that are in swsetup are available on line either at HP's website or on these forums.

 

The OEM "Key" really isnt the key on the bottom of your laptop, its a cert and key preloaded by the image made at the factory, and will activate.

When you do arecovery, all data from the image is rewritten to the drives, including that information, and your system will be as it was the day you first turned it on, activation included.

The key on the bottom is given in case you have an issue where you "need" a key to reactivate.

If you choose not to activate immeadiately, windows will either give a warning, ro it is set to perform a try (automatic activation), if you are activated, you're done, enjoy your laptop.