Help, Windows Validation

Very sorry if this has been asked before, I searched and found nothing.

I sold a laptop to a customer (i work at an electronics store), an acer 5100 with vista premium on it. Long story short the customer brought the laptop in because, after booting it, vista told her her copy was not valid.

It gave the options to; validate online, find out how to validate, boot with limited access (opens ie so you can purchase a key online), and an option to retype your product key. I could be wrong about the options, this is just off memory.

Anyways we tried to retype the product key, didnt work but while typing we noticed at the top is said "activate your copy of windows vista home basic".
The laptop came with vista premium..

If you didnt read all that, ths jist of it is; A laptop was purchased with vista premium installed and ready to go, and now it is saying its invalid.

Any help would be appreciated
Thanks in advance.

 

They must've done something to the OS, there's no logical reason that you sell it to them and it "knows" it's not you .

Maybe installing Vista Premium with the product key you have might work?

 

u should be able to call up m$ for phone activation

cheers ...

 

Well, we dont have any vista install cd's to use so that option is out.
And I'm not going to phone microsoft, I would send it to repair before that happens, but unfortunatly she stormed out of the store saying she was going to another place to get it fixed. No skin off my ass.

I assume she will be back, so I'd like to figure this out without having to send it to repair and piss her off even more.

Before we sold it, we reformatted it like we usually do using acer erecovery. Would that have maybe made the os think it was installed on another pc? I heard vista doesnt like being installed on a different pc than the one it was originally installed on.

 

She's hardly the first one this happens to. We had a fairly long thread on the topic recently (was it Pulp who ran into it?)

I got it too, during the 4 days I ran Vista.

Vista is just *very* picky about the hardware it's installed on. If you install it ona computer and then install a few drivers, the hardware might (from Vista's point of view) change so much it requires reactivation. And then it'll say the key is already in use or something like that, and say you have to buy a new key.

Very nice of Microsoft. Don't know what to tell you though. It is possible that if you wait a few days, you'll be allowed to activate (it did that for me). Alternatively, call Microsoft to get it activated over the phone.
(personally I'd be tempted to write them a complaint while we're at it)

 

I did send an email to m$ tech support, not a rant though. Maybe they will have some definitive answer.

And I believe she did update a driver, the one for the bisoncam, and that was only because it didnt work out of the box. Why the hell would acer start selling a laptop without making sure the drivers/hardware works in the first place?

Thanks for the reply btw, it just sucks having to sell these things, makes us look bad.

 

Reinstall the right product and use right key and you shound be good go if laptop has basic on it came with home preimer your customer must have install wrong build did they upgrade cd?

 

I dont think she installed anything, the laptop came with premium on it.

And also, does vista have problems returning to normal after either hibernation or standby? I think i read that it did somewhere, and I think I experienced those problems.. The laptop was unable to have its lid closed.. If it was closed, upon opening it the screen would either flash spasmatically, or not display anything at all.

I know there is an option to have the laptop do nothing when the lids closed but cmon, this **** should work. I really hate selling crap like this..

Thanks for the reply's, I guess there's nothing I can do, I'll send it to repair if she brings it back. Although it will be interesting to see what the store she brought it to says..

 

To be honest, the only thing you can really do is call Microsoft for activation. It really sucks, but that's what Microsoft has forced onto their customers. You can keep trying to use your activation key, but I doubt it will work.

 

I had the same problem, and ended up having to reinstall the OS. I was the guy that had the rather long thread about it