Vista OEM vs Retail DVD

[rosswil99]

Friend has a new Acer laptop with Home Premium pre loaded (OEM) and recovery partition.

He doesn't want the crap demos etc. Can he delete recovery partition amalgamate space and

reinstall OS with retail DVD using his OEM key?

ross

[redxii]

Yeah.

[MrCobra]

He will also need to backup the OEM certificate (*.xrm-ms) from his OEM install and add it to the fresh install. Install Home Premium without an install key. Once at the desktop run Cmd prompt with administrative rights and type the following info.

slmgr.vbs -ipk <product key>

And then install the certificate

slmgr.vbs -ilc oemcert.xrm-ms

Please note that the OEM key that Vista is installed with is NOT the same as the key on your sticker. The OEM key needs to be retrieved from the registry.

This will allow you to view your original OEM product key: http://www.rjlsoftware.com/software/utilit.../download.shtml

Edited November 17, 2008 by MrCobra