Vista not allowing activation after reformatting more than twice?

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G

Guest

Hello all,

I seem to have a problem:

I have the retail, "PowerTogether" (Microsoft Business Partner) Vista
Business.

Originally I installed it back in January as a test, activated it, and it
worked great.

I experienced some hardware problems with my HDDs a few weeks after that, so
I reformatted all my data, reinstalled and reactivated Vista fresh, and it
worked fine.

Just this week, I decided I wanted Vista on my primary HDD partition, so
once and for all, I decided to reformat and install Vista again, and upon
trying to activate, I get an error message saying my key is already in use.


I was under the impression with a retail copy of Vista you could
(re)activate as many times as needed without hassle. But now, on my third
reactivation attempt, it says my key is in use.
If it matters, none of my hardware has changed (save for my system RAM),
it's the same computer...I've just reformatted a couple times since
originally installing Vista.

What can I do? How can I get Vista to activate my legitimate key again? And
is it not true you can reformat once in awhile without worrying about
reactivation problems?

Thanks to anyone who replies!

-Gordon
 
Yes, thats what I ended up doing. Thanks for the reply!

One more question though, is that what I'll need to do every time I
reactivate Windows from now on?
I'm planning to upgrade my system in the coming months, and would probably
need to reformat. Can I just use the phone method again as many times as I
need without any problems? Or is there a limit there as well?

Thanks!
 
There are no limits to the number of times you can activate.

In previous versions of Windows (XP) the activation time clock was reset
after 120 days, which enabled you to re-activate automatically, over the
internet without the need to make the phone call. I'm not sure this is the
case with Vista as the activation information has not been published yet and
there is no user documentation since Vista is still new.
 
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