Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

[TeeJay]

Hello everyone, I installed a clean copy of Vista Ultimate, just minutes ago, when I came to the Windows Activation, it said the key is already in use. I'm 100% it's not in use...I purchased it when it first came out, I used it for a while, then went back to XP, a while ago, my brother asked me if he could use it since I'm not using it, so I gave it to him, and he installed it, everything went fine, but, few days later, he went back to XP, completely removed Vista from his PC, he formated his Hard disk.

I'm sure no one is using the key, does anyone know what could be causing this?

Thanks in advance.

[SuperSubZero]

Once a key has been activated, it's "supposed" to mark the key at MS as active, so if another machine tries to activate it, you get the warning you are seeing.

Removing the OS from the machine doesn't "deactivate" the license.

What you may need to do is call MS (if the # isn't shown in the message I'm not sure where it would be) and explain the situation to them.

[TeeJay]

Once a key has been activated, it's "supposed" to mark the key at MS as active, so if another machine tries to activate it, you get the warning you are seeing.

Removing the OS from the machine doesn't "deactivate" the license.

What you may need to do is call MS (if the # isn't shown in the message I'm not sure where it would be) and explain the situation to them.

Thanks a lot for replying

I forgot to mention that I've installed it and removed it several times, and everything went fine, but it's not working now...

[Joe Average]

There's a limit to how many times a retail copy will activate in that way, surprising that you got it more than maybe two or three times before it choked. It's tied primarily to the hardware, mind you, so you can sometimes get away with re-activating multiple times on the same mobo/CPU/etc combination of hardware. It's when the hardware changes where you encounter the blocks and the need to contact Microsoft.

If anyone else does happen to have that key, and they're currently using it, when you contact Microsoft and tell them you need to activate again (assuming this is a retail copy), just tell 'em you haven't used it for a while and since you paid for it (another assumption) that you're going to use it again on a new PC so it's asking for re-activation as the hardware is different. Even if it's the exact same hardware, that's your reason for calling <hint, hint>.

They'll give you a new key to use for activation, and the original one will be de-activated - if anyone happens to be using it, the next time they hit Windows Update they'll get locked out...

[TeeJay]

Hi

Thanks a lot for your reply Joe. I'll see what I can do and reply back to you.