Problems with gateway

S

shmitty

Gawd
Joined
Jul 25, 2006
Messages
876
I bought a computer from a neighbor that the hard drive went bad on. It had windows vista home premium on it and when I call microsoft they say since it had the OS installed by gateway they have to unlock the key. Gateway won't talk to me unless I purchase their support since its out of warrenty. I have a disc with Vista Home Premium I'm trying to use do I have any other options?
 
Really? Wow. I'd install it, try activating it online. If not, a phone call and say you reinstalled after a HDD failure and all is good (if you have to talk to a real person, most likely just the automated line will work).

A lot less work. Not sure why they are giving you the run around.
 
as soon as i put in the key they say its not valid and when i did talk to someone at microsoft they said they couldn't do anything it was on gateways end. Then gateway won't even let me talk to me...
 
Are you using the original install media or something else? You should be using the OEM install discs (the key is different for OEM/Retail/Upgrade versions). If it says invalid before you even hit the servers, then it sounds like it is just a key/media problem and not an activation/validation problem.
 
shmitty said:
The disc was thrown away can't get it.
Click to expand...

You should be able to purchase the recovery discs from Gateway.

Have you tried activating with Microsoft over the phone, but using their automated phone systems rather than talking to someone? I've been able to activate Lenovo Win7 OEM keys that way. They won't activate over the internet, but if you call and enter the numbers manually (and be sure to tell them it's only installed on the one machine!), it may work...
 
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