I need some serious help on reinstalling Vista.

[krazyl]

Hi, sorry for disappearing for like two days, but I was rather busy.

I just installed my motherboard and CPU today. The Vista installation disk from Dell seemed to have worked fine, shockingly enough. (I tried a repair install) Everything appears to be stable, I still have all my data, and even some of my games work fine.

However, I do have two problems. I notice that when I go under my control panel > system and mainteance > system, on the bottom I see "3 Day(s) until automatic activation. Activate Windows now". Clicking on it doesn't help, it just says "The Windows Vista Home Preminum product key you typed in is invalid for activation". That strikes me as odd since I haven't typed anything in though.

It does say I can activate it using a product key, but I...guess I've lost it. Apparently, I can get the key off my computer case, but I don't have that anymore (I'm a bloody moron). I've even checked on the packaging hodling the installation disk, I see a long string of numbers underneath a barcode, but that can't be it, I tried that out of desperation anyawy, but I get an "unacceptable character" message when I try to type it in. I guess I may really have to buy a new installation disk

On another note, I opened up the task manager and noticed under performance, it only shows two of the four cores I have on my CPU (Intel Q8400). However, under the device manager, I do see 4 cores listed. I'm a bit confused here, and I'm not even sure if my computer is using all 4 cores...

That might be it.


it will be 25 digits in a pattern like this:


XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX


Hope you find it, if not ur gunna have to purchase a new cd key.

 

[hackneyed]

Sadly, I have nothing with that pattern. I'm going to have to purchase a new one...

 

[Ojaser6]

Sadly, I have nothing with that pattern. I'm going to have to purchase a new one...

Whoah... Unlucky, man... I feel sorry for you! :eek:

 

[SIW2]

You could try putting the Dell dvd in the drive - have a look at the contents.

There is a key in a text file called PID inside the sources folder.

It was probably already entered silently during the installation.

You could try entering that. Unlikely to work as I suspect the installation checked your mobo and won't activate as it's not the original Dell set it up for.

Otherwise - contact Dell - and tell them you can't read the key on the side of the case.