[robnez]

Hey guys, I work fixing up computers, but this is the first time I've ran into this issue. I'm trying to reinstall windows vista home premium on an hp computer, but the recovery partition failed when I was trying to restore the computer, and the only version of windows I have is an ultimate version of vista. I've done it before where i use the ultimate version of windows to install home premium, but windows is saying it cant validate the produ key. any suggestions?

[Advertisements]

i use the ultimate version of windows to install home premium

If the DVD is retail and Home key product is OEM, it won't work.

[Broni]

i use the ultimate version of windows to install home premium

If the DVD is retail and Home key product is OEM, it won't work.

[robnez]

i use the ultimate version of windows to install home premium

If the DVD is retail and Home key product is OEM, it won't work.

I've done it before with other computers, which is why i was trying to do it with this one. and now im kinda stumped. gonna see if the people want to buy a set of recovery discs, but i'd hate to sell that to them if i could get windows working without them.

[Neil Jones]

Hey guys, I work fixing up computers, but this is the first time I've ran into this issue. I'm trying to reinstall windows vista home premium on an hp computer, but the recovery partition failed when I was trying to restore the computer, and the only version of windows I have is an ultimate version of vista. I've done it before where i use the ultimate version of windows to install home premium, but windows is saying it cant validate the produ key. any suggestions?

There is no such thing as a Vista Ultimate disk.
All Vista DVDs contain Vista, what gets installed with it (the features) is determined from either the product key you enter or the version you choose to install. Therefore all Vista OEM DVDs will work with all Vista OEM licences regardless of version.

If the laptop's relatively new, a common situation that occurs is that you boot off the Vista DVD, it asks you for a key, and whatever you feed it it doesn't like. The solution to this is to not put a key in, but select the right version of Vista according to the licence and install as per usual. Install Windows Vista Service Pack 1. When done you can then activate in the normal fashion and it should now accept the licence it didn't like before.

The issue is that the Vista DVD you have was probably made before Service Pack 1. Licence/Key validation was changed in SP1 for the newer keys, and those newer keys don't work on Vista DVDs that don't have Service Pack 1 integrated. As it's technically not possible to make a Vista SP1 DVD without a load of faffing about, it's far easier just to build the installation without a key and activate it later.

[diabillic]

This is why Vista allows you to enter the key in after the install

As Neil said, the activation process is altered a little bit post SP1 (KMS).

[robnez]

well that solves the issue, although one of the other techs came up with the same conclusion just earlier today before i looked at this posting. now tho, we found out that the customer has a banged up hdd, which failed the pc dr diag. explains why her computer was going so slow when she had 5gb of ram lol. so all that work, and she's just gonna get a new computer. oh well!