Possible to backup Vista (non OEM) activation?

[MarcusJClifford]

Hi All,

As part of my company's MSDN Universal subscription / Technet / Enterprise licence etc, I have various versions of Vista.

What I want to be able to do is backup the activation "key" for a computer so that (as I often have to do) when I need to format and reinstall Vista on that specific PC I can just "re-apply" the activation and it will be activated rather than having to contact Microsoft.

I just want to do this on one PC (I presume the activation "file / key" will perform a hardware inventory so each activation is unique to the PC).

I used to be able to do this with XP by backing up a single file and then reapplying it.

Having researched this a bit it seems I can use SLMGR to apply an activation "file" by using the -ilc switch and providing the file, but how do I backup whatever file it needs (is it at a certain file location etc?)

As this will be in a business environment I dont want anything "dodgy" so no cracks or extra files to download please, it needs to be an "official" way of doing this (which the SLMGR seems to indicate is possible).

Currently I am running it unactivated and having to use the SLMGR -rearm to continue past the 30 days which is not ideal.

Thanks in advance.

[MAVERICKS CHOICE]

To our knowledge only the OEM can be backed up & reapplied. The rearming is all you can do atm. We are constantly doing fresh installs & are up against the same prob. Its no biggy though.