Almost readable Vista COA

chunter

I have a HP Vista laptop which has a very deteriorated Vista COA sticker on the base.

Any ideas how to get round this. There are 3 or 4 chars which I just can't see properly. Would HP keep a record of these COAs. The HP Service Tag is in perfect condition.

Nilrem

If you've got a digital camera you could try taking a picture of it, then loading it up into something like IRfanview (assuming you don't have photoshop/paintshop pro already installed), and play with the contrast/colour settings (or even make it a negative image) which can work well to show up badly worn lettering.

Otherwise it's a case of looking carefully at it, and working out what the letters could be, and trying the various combinations

I don't know if HP would keep a record of the COA's, I would doubt it though
If they are like most large builders they'll install using a corporate key that works with their disk image, and then slap a COA on the laptop as it gets packaged, in which case you may not even be asked for the COA number if you install using the disks that came with the laptop (I wasn't when I reinstalled a couple of Fujitsu laptops with their reinstall disks the other day, nor when I've done Medion PC's in the past).

Jaffa.

Use Magic Jellybean Key Finder to find your Windows Vista product key

aerostar

The Vista key in your machine will not be the same as the one on your sticker unless you did an XP install from scratch, and from an install disc.

The reason being is that all manufacturers use a master copy and install that on 100s of machines, the COA on your machine would be used if you had to reload it or changed the spec and trigered a re-activation.

Jaffa.

aerostar wrote: »

The Vista key in your machine will not be the same as the one on your sticker unless you did an XP install from scratch, and from an install disc.

The reason being is that all manufacturers use a master copy and install that on 100s of machines, the COA on your machine would be used if you had to reload it or changed the spec and trigered a re-activation.

You still want to use the key thats already registered to the machine as it's likely the one on the bottom has never been used.

I've found if you use the one thats already used on the machine, Windows tends not to pester you about activation