downgrading vista

[Uranium-235]

had a customer who had a hard drive replaced at another place on this stupid slimline 3 months ago, they installed vista ultimate, given no key (vista home premium key on the outside). I swapped out memory a few times after some crashes and turns out it was the memory. but now its asking for activation, and the home premium key of course, will not work

any way to go about downgrading vista without have to re-install? will an oem vista disc work with this HP key. I know that shit works on XP but I know microshaft still has restrictions on vista/7

[ratdude747]

Re: downgrading vista

An OEM disk should work. I've done it with a Dell one before (as did brethin, the P.O. of the COA and disc).

[smason]

Re: downgrading vista

True manufacturer OEM Windows (at least the Dell version) all have the same key, which you never see unless you run a program that lists it. Not sure if HP or the others are the same, but it's BIOS locked and pre-activated. The number on the COA is just there for show.
You just install and if it likes what is sees in the BIOS strings, it just works.
I faked my D830 with a modified BIOS that was hacked to be SLIC 2.x and it worked on it as well. I had a Dell server with OEM Server 2008 on it. When I converted it to a VMWare box and ran 2008 in a VM, it complained. Had to modify the virtual BIOS file.
Now when you boot the VM you see a Dell BIOS screen