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<blockquote data-quote="Jimbo Bigbelly" data-source="post: 703517" data-attributes="member: 101742">I was unsuccessful in trying to buy a new activation key for my Vista Dell Inspiron notebook. Somehow my key got corrupted.&nbsp; So I get the black screen and the nag box telling me I have to put my key back in.&nbsp; I couldn't figure out how to get Dell support, because it is out of warranty.&nbsp; So&nbsp; purchasing another copy of the setup disk wasn't an option.The only solution I know of is to buy a new copy of Windows, and hopefully your hardware is industry-standard enough for current drivers to load and operate your devices correctly.&nbsp;&nbsp; Even if your hardware is supported by WDM drivers, the compatibility across a vista-to-Win10 upgrade is not likely, because binary compatibility is not supported.&nbsp; And it is not likely that Dell would get Microsoft to compile drivers to support 8 year old hardware.I know this is a Windows forum, but a second solution is to migrate to Linux.If you get it working, go get a copy of Clonezilla and make a backup hard drive.&nbsp; I wish I had done this for my system.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jimbo Bigbelly, post: 703517, member: 101742"] I was unsuccessful in trying to buy a new activation key for my Vista Dell Inspiron notebook. Somehow my key got corrupted. So I get the black screen and the nag box telling me I have to put my key back in. I couldn't figure out how to get Dell support, because it is out of warranty. So purchasing another copy of the setup disk wasn't an option. The only solution I know of is to buy a new copy of Windows, and hopefully your hardware is industry-standard enough for current drivers to load and operate your devices correctly. Even if your hardware is supported by WDM drivers, the compatibility across a vista-to-Win10 upgrade is not likely, because binary compatibility is not supported. And it is not likely that Dell would get Microsoft to compile drivers to support 8 year old hardware. I know this is a Windows forum, but a second solution is to migrate to Linux. If you get it working, go get a copy of Clonezilla and make a backup hard drive. I wish I had done this for my system. [/QUOTE]

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