Vista stopped recognizing product key.

[~susan]

I bought a Toshiba laptop from a rent-to-own place almost two months ago and
out of nowhere when I try to login to my windows account it pops up that my
product key for vista is invalid and the only options I have are to get help
from Toshiba (which only brings me to windows help online) or to buy a new
product key online.

The laptop only came with a restore disk so I have no idea what the original
product key for Vista is. Has anyone else had this problem?

 

[DP]

I think you need to talk to the rent-to-own store.
They sold you the computer.

 

[~susan]

I have. All they can do is offer me another restore disk which does nothing.

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

The product key most likely located at the bottom of the laptop, that is
where it is on my old Dell 840c, my Acer notebook, my brother Dell Inspiron
and my sister in laws Inspiron. If you are having problems activating, you
need to contact Toshiba about it since it is an OEM install of Windows
Vista, they should help get the software reactivated.

 

[DP]

But they were the ones who installed Vista on the machine, right?
So, I'm guessing they did something bogus when they installed it or else
they installed the same version of windows on multiple machines. Or, if
someone else rented the machine at some point, maybe the renter did
something to screw everything up.
Several suggestions:
1) Try telephone activation of Vista. Talk to a real person. They may be
able to help.
2) If that doesn't work, talk to someone at microsoft and see if they can
figure out who your activation key is licensed to. Maybe by looking at the
record of activation they might be able to tell if the rental store used the
key more than once, or if someone else took ownership of that key at some
point (i.e., someone else who may have rented the laptop before you).
3) The store sold you a computer with a working version of Vista. If Vista
doesn't work any more, the store has to fix that issue because it is no
longer the product they said they were selling you. It would be just like if
a floppy drive on the machine went bad after two months. If they can't fix
it, they should give you your money back.

 

[Patrician]

I have. All they can do is offer me another restore disk which does
nothing.

Your Vista product key will be on a little sticker on the underside of your
laptop. I'm guessing you didn't activate Vista when you first got the
machine and it has reached the end of the "grace period".


Trev

 

[~susan]

the product key on the bottom is for a windows xp home edition, not the
version of vista they upgraded to.

 

[~susan]

They said when the machines arrive to their store they are already installed
with Vista which is why they wouldn't send me a new copy of Vista or the
product key.

I'm going to try to call someone today but I have a feeling it won't help
seeing that I have no way of proving I'm not the one using pirated software.

 

[Debi F]

We are having this same problem on an Acer laptop that my daughter bought new
from Circuit City. We think that she installed a Vista upgrade offer that
came with her new purchase without realizing the significance of it, and
after the trial period she has to pay for it or stop using it. I tried to
fix this over a month ago and believe I was told I had to use a recovery disk
to get back to factory settings as there is no way to uninstall the upgrade.
We obtained a recovery disk from Acer, along with a Vista Home Premium disk,
but have no idea how to install them since we can't get to a command prompt
and the ONLY screen we can seem to get to is internet (or log off, or pay for
upgrade). Good luck to both of us! I think the solution will be the same,
if anyone has one...

 

[Michael Walraven]

A 'recovery disk' should be bootable. However you may need to go into your
BIOS and set the order of booting so that the DVD reader is before the hard
disc. I don't have a toshiba, there is usually some key to press during a
power-up restart, often it is stated on the initial screen. Otherwise your
will have to consult your manual on how to enter BIOS setup.

Michael
Vista Home premium.

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

You need to get in touch with the rent to own place about this then, they
are the ones who configured and provided the machine to you.

 

[uvbogden]

Prroduct Key and Activation problem details in this tutorial.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/85023-product-key.html