Transfer License of Ultimate to new PC
Posted by admin on Dec 5th, 2006
1. I purchased Vista Ultimate and installed on my desktop PC. 2. Used Family plan online and purchased 1 copy (new product key) and installed Vista Home Premium on my Laptop (Dell Inspiron 6000). 3. Used online upgrade and upgraded my Laptop to Vista Ultimate. 4. All working fine until the motherboard failed in Laptop. The Laptop is a little over 3 years old, so it is not worth having repaired. 5. Purchased new Laptop, (HP Pavilion dv9000) with Vista Home Premium preinstalled. 6. Here is my question. How do I transfer my license for Vista Ultimate to the new laptop without repurchasing Ultimate? Also what would the procedure be? I believe my copy of Ultimate is tied to the old key that was on the old laptop. Mark
Dec 6th, 2006 at 09:56 am
"Mark S123" Just upgrade the laptop with your online Ultimate purchase you will not be able to activate over the internet so just use the telephone activation route. The wizard will provide you with the appropriate phone number. Mike Brannigan
Dec 7th, 2006 at 02:31 am
Mike,I upgraded my desktop PC with a new MB and CPU. I ran into an issue with SATA RAID drivers which I was unable to overcome without doing a clean install with my upgrade Ultimate product. The activation wizard now simply informs me that the Product ID that I have entered is currently in use. It offers me the option to purchase another product key, but it does not offer any telephone numbers to call."Mike Brannigan" wrote:
Dec 8th, 2006 at 04:29 am
I will be calling Microsoft activation later today and have them step me through the upgrade process. I will post the steps later.Their number is 8664460397 Hrs 6a6p Pacific time MonFriRegular support has given me a Case #.Mark "LewT" wrote:
Dec 11th, 2006 at 04:10 pm
***UPDATE***Problem The upgrade process took about 4 hours to complete.When I went to activate the key it says the key I have cannot run Ultimate. I talked to Microsoft and they said that some HP Pavillion (LapTops) have non matching ID numbers. What is on the bottom of the laptop does not match Vista on the drive and it is causing problems. I looked and mine is that way.I called HP and explained to them what Microsoft said. HP wanted me to uninstall the upgrade and reinstall using a different anytime upgrade DVD/CD. I told them that won't help and I want to talk to a manager/supervisor. All they need to do is give me a new product key that will work with ultimate, it’s just that simple.I just received a call from Microsoft asking if my problem was resolved yet. I explained the problem to her and they will keep it open until I let them know it is solved.I am waiting for a call from them (HP)Mark"Mark S123" wrote:
Dec 12th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
The foloowing is what I went through to transfer my Ultimate License to a new LapTop. Some of the information is already mentioned in my earlier post. This is more of a step by step history. (with a happy ending) 1.First I went to windows marketplace.com, at the top of the page is a button for your digital locker. Click the add button.2.I clicked on install and started the process.3.I inserted the windows anytime upgrade disk that came with the new laptop.4.When the prompt came up on the screen I clicked on setup.exe.5.The upgrade began. It took about 4 hours to complete. During the process do not hit any keys or take out the disk, and finally a screen will appear saying completion. The screen will go blank at times with only the mouse pointer showing, again don’t touch anything. There are multiple reboots and during the reboots a screen will appear saying press any key to boot from CD/DVD don’t touch it! The boot menus will appear and disappear on their own. You’ll even get the time zones setup screen prompt, answer that information. You will then get some more blank blue Vista background screens for a while. Then you’ll get some words appearing on the screen telling you what it’s doing and some advertising for Windows Vista and its abilities. Eventually you will get a sign on screen. Go ahead and sign on and a display will say preparing your desktop, when that is done you will get your desk top. Then Vista will install downloads and updates. When prompted to restart, remove the CD DVD and reboot. Now, you’re almost done.6.The next step is to activate Windows Vista ultimate.7.This is where my problems began! In trying to activate it I received a message that this product key is already in use. To make a very long story short, HP was totally useless in helping me with getting the key activated/Reactivated. The technician I talked to kept telling me I needed to reinstall ultimate and that Microsoft needs to give me a new ultimate product key. You cannot use a premium key with ultimate. I’ve been waiting now for almost 10 hours for a call back when I raised the problem to the supervisor’s level.8.While I was waiting for HP to call me, Microsoft support called me to ask if my problem has been resolved. I told them no but I was waiting for HP to call me. They told me if I was not getting any satisfaction with HP to call them back and they would see what they could do to resolve the issue.9.After 6 hours of waiting I decided to call Microsoft back, they stepped me through the process of resetting the product key using a 45 digit code number. Then they activated my existing Premium product key but now as an ultimate key. Obviously the tech people at HP don’t know what they’re talking about.10.Everything is now working fine, what a day! Thank you Microsoft support. Mark PS: I used Vista voice recognition softeware to type this.
Dec 14th, 2006 at 04:09 am
Mark,I also ended up with a happy ending. After doing a hardware upgrade, the new onboard RAID chip driver would not fully work with the Vista RAID partition from my previous HD. So, I had to clean install Vista using the new chip to set up the RAID array. Like you, when I tried to activate Vista, I recieved a message that my product key was already in use and I was not given any option to call or activate online without a new product key. Very frustrating road block.Microsoft support informed me that all I needed to do was rerun Vista setup as an upgrade to the clean Vista install, add my product key, and drive on. It worked perfectly. I am now up and running on my new hardware! :)Lew"Mark S123" wrote:
Dec 18th, 2006 at 03:54 am
Glad to hear your problem is resolved. My system is working fine as well. Last night I did a "complete" PC back on an external hard drive, just in case.Just for the record, I have still not received the phone call from an HP supervisor.Maybe I should send an email to the HP CEO. Mark"LewT" wrote: