vista upgrade disc.. questions

my sister has vista premium on her system now.. it came with it.. it is a hp..

validation continues to tell her it is not genuine. we called ms and they told her that her key is already in use!!! bs.. they would not re-activate it..

first off has anyone encountered this what total bs...

if she buys a cheap upgrdae disc do you think she can use the coa that comes with it to simply activate the copy of premium that is installed on her machine now?? or does it have to be a upgrade to use the disc's coa??

someone help me out with this. thanks

 

If that's the case I would call HP and bring it up. If HP provided it, and it's in use, it's an HP issue. Let them know that Microsoft rejected it. Sometimes Microsoft's authentication can be screwy.

And she could get an OEM upgrade copy of Vista Premium and use its code, yeah. So long as she has the right version, no problem.

 

i am going to call hp tomm and see what they say but depending on how long it takes we may just buy one.. she uses it everyday for work and cant wait very long..

well she did buy a disply system from office depot it was only on display for maybe 2 days i know the store manager there.. could someone have simply copied it down and used it to activate already? thats kinda what im thinking i read this all over everyone just tells people all over the net to go to best buy or somewhere and copy a code down..

if so man that sucks big time!!! so she gets screwed because someone else is actually using her code??

cant be sure this is the issue but i have been reading this all over the place today...

so we can 100% buy a vista premium UPGRADE disc and simply put its ket into the premium she already has installed correct?? thanks

 

Good idea.

Call HP up, see what they have to say. Let them know it was a display model and where you purchased it and when. While you figure out your key problem you could re-install Vista without a key. When the Vista installer asks for a key just ignore it and leave it blank. It will give you up to a month to run the OS before requiring you enter a key-code/activation. This will let you use the OS with no limitations during that time while you figure out how you want to proceed with getting a new key - either from HP or purchase of a new disc.

Yep. I have several copies of Vista I use for testing (Home Pre, Business, Ultimate) and all my keycodes written down. I use one single DVD to install them all. Vista DVDs all every edition on a single disc, except for 64-bit versions.

I just put in the new key when it asks me to and go about my way.

 

Oh, and yeah. That's one of the unspoken perks of Vista. OEM upgrade copies can be installed without upgrading anything, and no previous version is required. At all. Still, OEM regular editions are cheaper than most upgrades, so it's just as good a buy.

My Tecra M7 runs a copy of Vista Business Upgrade that I got from Windows Marketplace. I had originally intended to upgrade from XP Tablet Edition (I hated it) but Toshiba wouldn't honor the Vista Upgrade Program initialliy. So I went out and bought the upgrade key myself. Come to find out, upon a full reformat of the drive, I could load Vista using the upgrade key no problem. And have been using versions of that since.

Since then, I've managed to get several other copies of Vista (including the Toshiba Upgrade Program copy they FINALLY honored after five months of waiting).