moving back to XP from Vista - reactivation hurdles

[Guest]

I'd be interested in the groups observations about my situation. I have a
homebuild. I purchased a copy of Home XP with an Vista upgrade coupon from a
well know internet hardware retailer. In order to get the Vista upgrade, I
needed to send in the Product Key. After wrestling with Vista for some time
without any successs in getting the sound to work, I want to move back to XP
as the sound does work in XP (an Intel board, FWIW). Several phone calls to
the activiation group result in different product keys, but to fully
activate, I need to provide a confirm code. The intermediate code provided
during the activaiton process comes up as "invalid" for the activation group.
I've spent literally days on the phone trying to resolve this. The
activation group finally sent me to the Tech support number, which wants to
charge $59 before even talking to me.

From where I sit, I have a legal CD, that is installed nowhere else. I
don't have a product key that will fully work because I had to send it in to
receive the Vista upgrade. While I have XP now installed and running, I'm
prevented from downloading updates as I can not complete the activation. In
my view, I should be able to have a fully installed version of XP.

Does anyone have any suggestions other than paying yet again?

Thanks in advance

 

[Guest]

The sound problem may be due to needing the Windows HDA add-on. Some
soundchips won't work without this.

As for activation, this seems a ridiculous situation if you already had a
legit copy of XP. If you only have Vista, then that doesn't entitile you to
downgrade* to XP, but in this case there should be no problem.

*Figuratively speaking.