how can i reinstall my oem vista while using a new vista?

[frandgp]

I bought a laptop with oem home premium vista, but two bad things happened.
The first is that I didn't know I had to activate it! and I didn't.
The second is a troian horse that I discover in my computer.
The funny thing is that these two events occured the same day!!!
One day I found my desktop black, so I did a scan and found a troian horse
and decided to change operating system. I got from a friend a copy of vista
and installed it. But i don't want to do anything illigal and I want back the
version of vista that i used to have!
Browsing the net I discovered that if i don't activate vista I might find my
desktop black as it happened on my laptop.

What shall I do? I just want my clean version of vista back. I tried to type
my product key that I found in the rear side of my laptop but didn't work.

thanks

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

The trojan likely cause the activation issue, as preinstalled systems are
already activated. Now that you've installed a retail version, you'd need a
retail license to use it. What you *should* do is reinstalled the factory
image, which is generally kept on a separate volume of the hard drive. If
you didn't wipe it out when installing the retail copy, then check your
system documentation on how to restore it. Otherwise, contact the
manufacturer for the appropriate media.

Incidentally, an unactivated copy of Vista will not go to a black screen. It
will go into a limited access mode where it will stay until a valid license
is obtained.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com