Must I buy another (third) OS?

A few months ago in Geneva I bought a discounted Acer Aspire L100 small desktop PC. The OEM Vista Home Premium was in French (I am English/German speaking) but I saw that, included in the package CDs was an Acer disk labelled "Windows Anytime Upgrade" with a number of languages listed, one of which being English. I loaded it and proceeded to install a new version of Vista, in English - everything worked.

Then on the next boot it all turned sour. Vista asked for the product key (it had done that on the original install) then said it was incompatible and led me to register for upgrading on-line. But there was no Internet link on the PC so I opted for the alternative phone call procedure but the numbers shown all met with "invalid number" when dialled.

I eventually found that my only solution was to buy a new clean-install copy of Vista, which I did. The English language Vista Ultimate arrived and I successfully installed it. I then added an Internet connection and the system automatically detected new updates and installed them.

However, the Acer Aspire L100 mini-desktop was a disaster, unable to run the Pinnacle program for which I bought the system. The hardware would just die on me due to power supply inadequacies and overheating because of the tiny case; I found on various forums many other sufferers of the multiple hardware problems of this machine – it was never going to run my applications.

I found a local computer shop that made an offer to use the Acer's AMD Athalon dual-core CPU and 320Gb hard disk in a tower cabinet with new Asus motherboard, power supply and 4Gb memory. I should be picking up the system in the next few days and my intention was then to re-install the Vista Ultimate with the new configuration.

I have since learned that I probably will not be able to re-install my new Vista Ultimate (that only ran a few days in the Acer) in my new system - the product key will already have been used/set/registered and not be allowed to be further installed and activated in what it may see as a new machine.

Could anyone confirm if this is so and that my only solution is to buy yet another copy of Vista? If so, I will have paid for three OS copies for my system, the original French language OEM Home Premium, the clean-install English language Vista Ultimate and now another …

Any clarification would be gratefully received.

No, you will not have to buy a new copy as long as it is deleted off the old one first.

Read more on this:

> Source 1
> Source 2
> Source 3

Thao said:

No, you will not have to buy a new copy as long as it is deleted off the old one first.

Click to expand...

Great news Thao, thanks.

The only cloud on the horizon will be having to call Microsoft here in Switzerland for activation - the numbers I have for them don't work and they charge $90 to e-mail them. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Thanks again and for the relevant links.

Curlew said:

Thao said:

No, you will not have to buy a new copy as long as it is deleted off the old one first.

Click to expand...

Great news Thao, thanks.

The only cloud on the horizon will be having to call Microsoft here in Switzerland for activation - the numbers I have for them don't work and they charge $90 to e-mail them. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Thanks again and for the relevant links.

Click to expand...

Ah, I see. Well, best of luck with that!

Hopefully whatever road you take ends up being cheaper & easier than a new operating system at least!

Hey Curlew,
This will not be a problem as you will have the chance to format during the new install,
Just take your time and read all screens carefully It will all go well.

pooch said:

Hey Curlew,
This will not be a problem as you will have the chance to format during the new install,
Just take your time and read all screens carefully It will all go well.

Click to expand...

Good news Pooch, vielen Dank!

With this forum's support behind me I am feeling much more confident to tackle this re-installation, especially now that I know there is no MS license conflict to install to another machine.

Hi Curlew,

If the Ultimate dvd you bought was a Retail version , you can use the product key on a different machine.

If you bought the cheaper OEM ( System builder ) dvd - it will have OEM written on it- then you can only continue to use it on the machine it was originally installed on. You can, however, upgrade this machine as much as you like . If the product key refuses to activate ( for example due to a motherboard change ), you need to call MS to give you another.
If you need to call MS, there is a toll free number

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/84488-activate-vista-phone.html

Hope that helps

SIW2

SIW2 said:

If the Ultimate dvd you bought was a Retail version , you can use the product key on a different machine.

If the product key refuses to activate ( for example due to a motherboard change ), you need to call MS to give you another. If you need to call MS, there is a toll free number
[ ....]
Hope that helps

Click to expand...

Very much so, thank you. I do have the full retail Vista Ultimate and I am now relieved to know that I should have no license problems to re-install in a new machine.

However, I am not so confident that a fresh activation will go smoothly. Having tried to license the first Acer OEM with updated language installation (see my first posting) I found that the phone numbers for Switzerland were out of date and returning "invalid number" when dialled.

I just hope that following the Vista installation I shall have a working system that allows me to set up the wireless link to my router and cable modem so that I can effect an Internet activation before I am closed down.

I am now impatiently waiting for the system delivery to see how it all goes - many thanks again for your help.