Windows Vista Vista Ultimate Reinstall On New Machine

[jonycat]

Hello All,
My first post here. My problem is I have a retail Vista Ultimate I wish to reinstall on a new box I built (64bit). However, I cannot activate it over the internet because it was installed on an old 32bit machine I no longer use. How do I activate this darn OS. Do I have to purchase another Vista retail disk? Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

THANKS !!
jonycat

 

[kemical]

I'd go ahead and install anyway. When it comes to activation, click to activate then when it comes up with the message that the key is already in use click the activate via the telephone option. Now proceed to activate via the phone and you'll usually find it works. If you end up having to talk to MS just say your old machine died..
Although your OEM licence will be officially buggered you can still get the os to run and recieve updates ect..

 

[jonycat]

Thanks kemical for the help. I'll go ahead and try to activate via the phone route. Maybe it's me but Mr. Gates seems to be getting paranoid about piracy these days since Win. 2K or XP are not as problematic switching to a new machine.

Thank You
jonycat