invalid product key

[apmb0003]

How do I load win 2000?? My hard drive was blank formatted ect,and my win98 boot disk was in the floppy drive and from there I typed D:\setup. The win2000 said it could not be loaded in DOS. then I rebooted with only the cd in the pc and the set up ran perfect.however, at the enter product key,it kept saying invalid number # Product Key Removed by Sheriff Q Removed reference to pirate key
I tried to upgrade from win 98 on another win2000 compatible pc and the same error Wrong product key
My original product key will not work either
i have purchased win 2000 disk

[Mustang]

You're best bet is to contact Microsoft about replacing your product key.

You will need to provide certain information to them but they are the only ones who can assist.

[Cave_Dweller]

I've run into that a couple times, each time I had transposed characters. I try twice, then have another tech read the key off as I type. Works every time......then the jokes start. <IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0">

I have heard of bad product keys, there were a bunch recently shipped with Win XP, so it is a real possibility with your Windows 2000 key. If that is the case, then as Mustang said, Microsoft is your only legal next step.

[Wayward Clam]

I have seen, in older versions of Windows, legitimate product keys get rejected. It was because we had gotten the disks mixed up with the licenses, i.e. an IBM Win98 Companion CD and a generic Win98SE CD. I guess M$ changes the algorhythm somewhere along the line... once we sorted this out and matched them back, they worked fine.

[em-clown]

Get into a DOS prompt

go to the CD drive..make sure it is just:
D:\>

(where D is the letter of the drive). Then type:

cd i386


Then type
winnt

And see if that works.