HP laptop key

[crazee]

Bought a HP laptop that came with a parts laptop. Laptop crashed. Reloaded xp from orig. HP cds.

Microsoft says this is not genuine software.

I used key from sticker on this case. If parts were used from other laptop (not sure which were), do I need to use the key on other case?

If not, what is the deal here?

[swatbat]

Call MS and they will walk you through fixing it.

[crazee]

Guess I'll try it. MS website says to contact v endorsince they installed. HP won't answer email.
Frustrating since I have the orig HP cds.

[swatbat]

Yea if you call the number it should get you through.

Another option is to use the key update tool.

http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/selfhelp/PKUInstructions.aspx

Use it to change the key to the one on the notebook. The HP disks your a vlk key that is tied to the systems via the oembios.bin file on the disk. Shouldn't be blacklisted but you never know.

Anyway the keyupdatetool will let you replace it with the key on the notebooks sticker. A lot of these keys will not activate without a phone call though. The reason was that people were using them to install windows on other systems as their system didn't use it.