Activation key required??

psychopathbabble

Hi, don't know if you can help me.. I recently had a new hard drive installed on my acer laptop. It was working fine for a couple of days, but now it keeps popping up that I need to enter an activation key for Vista to work properly. I enter the key on the sticker on my laptop but it says it's not allowed to be installed??

What do I do?!

nearlyrich

Who installed the new hard drive?

Sounds like a problem with the software installation have you got your back up disks to reinstall your operating system?

psychopathbabble

I'm really not sure, I'll have to have a hunt for them.

A computer shop installed it for me... should I just wait to get in touch with them on Monday?

scheming_gypsy

If it won't activate it should give you a number to do it over the phone. If you phone them and explain that your hard drive died and you had it replaced and Vista installed at the shop.... They'll possibly give you a working activation code as your have a licence but it doesn't match the install disk that was used.

psychopathbabble

Sorry, I should have added when I click onto activivation phone line option, and search for UK it comes up saying a setting has been changed that means vista won't work properly, but I can't get past it! When it comes up again, I'll get the exact wording

psychopathbabble

an unauthorised change was made to windows

windows has discvered a change that will result in limited windows functionality, use the link below to learn more (this link just takes me straight to windows internet site about genuine products)

steve1980

0800 018 8354 Microsoft Activation number.

paddyrg

Quite possibly missing if the shop used an OEM copy which should be preauthenticated, so you would never deal with MS. Maybe their preauthenticated serial is a pirate, or ran out of licenses, too? Was it a reputable company, or some backstreet fixit shop?

Anyway 08000188354 is the ms authentication line, or was at least. You may need to mash the keypad to get to a human.

psychopathbabble

Thanks for your help everyone, am trying the telephone number now.

stilltheone

Let me know the outcome. If they expect you to pay, I will fix it for you.

psychopathbabble

I need to call again as the lady on the phone had no idea what I was talking about... will ring the guy who fixed it too although I'm worried too incase he wants to charge me more money! (it's only a cheap laptop so by the time I paid for the repairs and buy a new code, I might as well have bought a new one!)

Thanks for your help!