I have on a few occasions tried to reinstall windows vista on a laptop without recovery discs, I have used a genuine disc and the product key off the sticker under the laptop, but get an invalid key message, can anyone tell me why this happens,
Printable View
I have on a few occasions tried to reinstall windows vista on a laptop without recovery discs, I have used a genuine disc and the product key off the sticker under the laptop, but get an invalid key message, can anyone tell me why this happens,
most of the time when i get this type of problem, it's due to the CD/DVD comming from a different source than the key.
For example, a retail DVD won't accept an OEM key and vice versa.
With XP, there was a way of changing what "source" the CD came from based on a numerical in a file (i386\setupp.ini - PID). I think this is no longer valid with Vista/7
Are you using the correct version ie: home premium,business,ultimate