Argh! Windows vista suddenly deactivated itself - Help!

Hey,

Need some help from anybody who can offer it. I've been running vista for a few months now, installed from a dell oem disc (I bought the laptop from dell and therefore have a legitimate copy of windows, I need to stress that, this isn't some illegal copy crap) but today when I turn it on I get a message saying:

"Your windows vista product key is invalid for activation"

Then it lets me run with limited features (which is basically no features, i can just about use firefox and utorrent, but theres no taskbar or anything).

could anybody offer any advice? I'd rather not have to call the dell support because they generally offer nothing but stress...

Thanks

I would look in the bay of pirates . Since you do have a legitamate copy of vista, getting a crack to activate it isn't really wrong. Or you could install XP. Better yet, get a Mac .

Just phone MS and explain your problem... If its legit, they will get it sorted.. No problem..

Whenever I try to run one of those activation things (or if I run ccleaner I get the same problem), it tells me "Not enough quota is available to process this command".

Does this mean they've limited something in order to stop me running stuff like that?

If I did call up customer support, as this is a dell oem disc would I speak to microsoft or dell?

Cheers

You probably got trojanised at some point, and the trojan stole your product key.

I've seen these dumps on other sites with tons of MS Product keys. Other people are using your key and MS sees the multiple use of it, and has flagged it as "invalid"

Thats the only legit explanation that fits, as software usuallay doesn't just disable itself for NO reason.

Phone MS if its legit, they'll probably issue you a new uncirculated key.

Hope that helps.

menly said:

Whenever I try to run one of those activation things (or if I run ccleaner I get the same problem), it tells me "Not enough quota is available to process this command".

Does this mean they've limited something in order to stop me running stuff like that?

If I did call up customer support, as this is a dell oem disc would I speak to microsoft or dell?

Cheers

Click to expand...

DELL won't do shit for you, they'll tell you to call MS.

hawke is probably right. ms should help if you have a bad product key. i would also go to trend micro and do a online scan.

It was only last week, when installing xp on one of my workstations for about the 6th time in 3years and when i went to activate with cd key, it poped up telling me ive used to too many times... I called MS and it was resolved within 10mins...