Vista - Retail Media + OEM serial (both legit) = No activation.

My wife's EMachine PC came with an OEM load of Vista Home Premium installed on it. There was no media included.

We had to install XP Pro on the machine because of some classes that she was taking. Now that said classes are over with, she wanted to go back to Vista.

Unfortunately now we couldn't do a restore back to the original factory load - something got hosed up when we went to XP.

Since I had the Vista serial number that was on the label on the back of the machine, I borrowed my friend's Vista Home Premium retail DVD and installed from that.

To my dismay, now we can't activate with Microsoft - I assume because of the mismatch of OEM and retail.

If I call Microsoft to activate, am I wasting my time? Will they actually be able to assist with this situation?

Thanks everyone!

In message <OedCMtnKJHA.456@xxxxxx> Bruce Chambers
<bchambers@xxxxxx> was claimed to have wrote:
This was true in XP, but is *not* true in Vista.

When you're dealing with recovery type media, it may still be true that
only a valid OEM key will work, but when you're talking about retail
Vista DVDs, you can use any full, upgrade or OEM license, the Vista
installer will act appropriately.

I've personally tested this, I have OEM keys for Vista Ultimate and Home
Premium here, both install just fine with my retail media as well as
Microsoft-branded OEM media (purchased as OEM rather then acquired
through an equipment vendor)

I've also checked that the retail DVDs and OEM DVDs are also byte for
byte identical, and happen to match the non-recovery format OEM DVD
included with Toshiba laptop.

Man oh man do I feel stupid! I must have just fat-fingered the key when I put it in during install.

I just selected the option to enter another key and typed it in again and it activated without a single problem!

DUH!

The E-machine I purchased last year came with Vista premium pre-installed as
yours did. E-machines also supplied drivers and other software on a hidden
partition along with a Windows Vista premium DVD for re-installing the
operating system.

The manual contained instructions for creating a recovery CD for drivers etc
but the operating system would have to be re-installed via the Vista DVD
supplied with the machine.

--

--
John Barnett MVP
Windows XP Associate Expert
Windows Desktop Experience

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org
Web: http://www.silversurfer-guide.com

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"JWhipple" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
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