lmacri
Vista Pro

Do you know how I can activate now? MS refused to give me a downgrade key "because Vista is EOL" when it was never stated I couldn't get a key after EOL.
Hi Mechanical:
As far as I know the slui.exe 4 method in Step 2 / Option 2 of Brink's tutorial How to Activate Vista Normally and by Phone Activation still works - at least if you're reinstalling Vista SP2 on a computer that shipped from the factory with that same OS. I know of someone who used this method in Dec 2021 and was able to activate a clean reinstall of Vista SP2 on their old Dell Inspiron 1501.
However, I have no idea if this automated phone method will work for you since you are downgrading from Win 7 SP1 to Vista SP2. I presume the product key number on your COA sticker is for a Win 7 OS, but you said in your original post that "microsoft says OEM licenses have downgrade rights" so hopefully that won't be an issue for you.
My Computers
System One System Two
-
- Operating System
- 32-bit Vista SP2 Home Premium
- Manufacturer/Model
- HP Pavilion dv6835ca
- CPU
- Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz
- Motherboard
- Quanta 30D2 (U2E1)
- Memory
- 3 GB RAM
- Graphics Card(s)
- NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
- Sound Card
- Realtek High Definition Audio
- Hard Drives
- 250 GB SATA Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS 5400 rpm
- Other Info
- Malwarebytes Premium v3.5.1-1.0.365 * Firefox ESR v52.9.0
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- Operating System
- 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2
- Manufacturer/Model
- Dell Inspiron 15 5584
- CPU
- Intel i5-8265U @1.60/1.80 GHz
- Motherboard
- Dell Inc. 07R8NW
- Memory
- 8 GB DDR4 SDRAM
- Graphics card(s)
- Intel UHD Graphics 620
- Hard Drives
- Toshiba 256 GB KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD
- Other Info
- Microsoft Defender * Malwarebytes Premium * Firefox