vista business activation on a T60P...

[SaberX]

I have a strange problem that i never seen before...
My landlord has a T60P wide screen.Very nice laptop.He had it for about 2 years now.
He used it for about 1 year and then asked me to clean it up.(Reinstall Vista)
This is about a year ago. I formatted the 100gig drive in it with the Windows Vista Business disk that came with it.It's not the Lenovo recovery disks.It's the Microsoft's Vista Business dvd.
I used the Vista Business COA# on the bottom of the T60P and it installed fine.I did the system update and loaded all Lenovo's drivers and software that's needed.Went through the vista activation and the system was all set up.
This was a year ago.
NOW the last week he's getting a pop up saying Vista needs to be activated again.I try the online and wont go through.Says i have to phone into Microsoft or buy a new COA key.
So why after a full year of being activated he now has to do it again?
What would make Vista do this?

[GomJabbar]

Make sure he hasn't been infected with malware, possibly conflicker.

http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/in ... chart.html

[tdawg5480]

was it an original windows vista disk or one downloaded from the net? many from the net include vista loader which emulates bios. I used to personally use this now later on MS and lenovo revoked a oem license key therefore making it useless and un activated. Used vista loader 3.0 and emulated a different bios from another MFG works perfectly now......FYI I dont condone this however my product key was lost hence Im not going to make ms/lenovo richer


good luck

[SaberX]

It's OEM that came with the T60P from Lenovo.In the box it had a Vista Buss 32bit. It's not the recovery dvd's but a full clean dvd from Microsoft.
Funny thing is this is the dvd i used last year to format and install Vista on his system.I activated it back then and all was fine. Nothing has changed in the system.But now it's say he needs to buy a new windows key.
But he just bought a 320gig drive so i'm going to put that in place of the 100 gig and do a full clean windows install.

[jdhurst]

The easiest way is to purchase a set of Lenovo Recovery CD's. Much less than a license and they will work. Not using Lenovo recovery CD's is pushing a boulder uphill. .... JDH

[GomJabbar]

I've had to phone in before, and it wasn't a big deal. I've had a BIOS update cause the need for reactivation problem that you describe. If the BIOS was updated, or other hardware, that could cause the need for reactivation.

You may find the following link informative, even though it refers to XP.
Windows Product Activation (WPA) on Windows XP

[SaberX]

The easiest way is to purchase a set of Lenovo Recovery CD's. Much less than a license and they will work. Not using Lenovo recovery CD's is pushing a boulder uphill. .... JDH

Ya i made a full set of recovery dvd's when he first got the system.When i put the 320gig in i think i'm going to use them.

[SaberX]

I've had to phone in before, and it wasn't a big deal. I've had a BIOS update cause the need for reactivation problem that you describe. If the BIOS was updated, or other hardware, that could cause the need for reactivation.

You may find the following link informative, even though it refers to XP.
Windows Product Activation (WPA) on Windows XP

Never did a BIOS update .But one of the last days the Lenovo system update was working,i did do a scan and it found newer drivers for just about all hardware.Was over 800megs of updates.(newer ATI,wireless,network,bunch of other drivers). Maybe that triggered something.
He was running out of space on his 100 gig anyway(like 10gig free) so he just picked up a new 320gig .

[GomJabbar]

While looking for some information related to activation, I stumbled across the following, which might apply to your case.

Symptoms

You may be prompted to activate Windows Vista on a computer on which Windows Vista activation was not previously required. For example, this problem may occur on a computer where Windows Vista was preinstalled by an OEM or by using a Volume Licensing installation.

Cause

This problem may occur because a specific system setting is removed when a program runs with administrative credentials. The removal of this system setting may cause a BIOS validation check to fail. The BIOS validation check is part of the system activation process. Therefore, you may be prompted to activate Windows Vista, even though the system did not previously require activation. For example, this problem is known to occur when you use Intuit QuickBooks 2007. However, this problem may also infrequently occur when you install other programs or device drivers.

Note This problem does not occur because of an issue in the installed program or device driver. This problem is caused by a system problem in Windows Vista.

You may be prompted to activate Windows Vista on a computer on which Windows Vista was already activated by a Volume License or OEM installation