Uh oh. Invalid Vista

[Shooty*]

Gents,
This may be a real n008 problem, but would be grateful for thoughts. I'm sure the answer is on google somewhere, but I'm using the wrong words to search (authentication? Validation? eh?)

Right: a guy in my office has a vaio laptop.

The warranty expired.

On cue, the hard drive failed.

Me, being clever, replaced the hard drive (which was fun)

Using my OEM copy of vista, I reinstalled vista and (here's the clever part) used his validation code thingy which was on the sticker on the bottom of his laptop.

That worked fine at my house. I validated and got NOT warning messages for the 3 days I retained the machine to install updates, patches, adaware, etc.

Now HE'S got it back at his house, and it's giving him the "this validation number is already in use" error message. That's not the exact wording. You know what I mean, but he's not taken an exact note of the message for me.

My understanding is that he should call MS and say "Yeah, my hard drive broke, I reinstalled, can you make it so that my validation/ reg code is valid again please?"

Is that right? Is it that simple?

cheers.


Edit: Woot! 400th post! Yay for me!

[GoNz0]

yes phone MS and ask why being as though its had a new hard drive under warranty (you heard its under warranty ok )

[Taz]

Tell him to use the phone method of acvtivation. I've had this happen to me three times with my OEM copy of Vista after SP1 appeared. The phone activation worked perfectly to get my Vista reactivated. You don't actually speak to anyone at MS - it's a menu-driven system that talks to you and you press keys on your phone to enter the number displayed on your computer screen.

[-iceblade^]

that phone activation sucks...

I tried to activate my Server 2003 HDD here and then got that stupid activation rubbish. having to make an international call for activation purposes, then to be bounced around inbetween a retarded system and a good for nothing CS rep is not fun...

dont even make me start with the issues i'm having with XP SP3...

[Koolpc]

It will be fine. Just ring them up.

[Splash]

that phone activation sucks...

I tried to activate my Server 2003 HDD here and then got that stupid activation rubbish. having to make an international call for activation purposes, then to be bounced around inbetween a retarded system and a good for nothing CS rep is not fun...

dont even make me start with the issues i'm having with XP SP3...

International? Where are you located? Unless I'm much mistake they have numbers geographically located all over the world.

[Sprite]

They have freephone numbers aswell