Thanks for your quick reply, but when I run Windows Loader it tells me to install the cert manually. I can't do this because I can only boot into safe mode - or am I missing a trick here?
Thanks again for your help. I haven't tried safe mode w/command prompt - although I did try normal safe mode then opened CMD. The script failed with a security message, which I believe is usual for safe mode. I'll try later in the week - got v.early start at work in the morning, so no time to do it now. And no, I don't see any way to boot normally - I only get the option to enter another key (which presumably must be a retail one, which I don't have) or go online to buy another licence. BTW, Toshiba will supply the recovery DVD for £30 . . . that would definitely be the last resort
SOLVED. My issue was that unless I booted Vista into Safe Mode, it would only offer reduced functionality mode (i.e. Internet Explorer) and none of the tools here worked in Safe mode. However, I found that if I started Vista with reduced functionality, I could navigate from the IE address bar to C:\Windows, load explorer.exe and get to my desktop. From there, all the tools worked - I did the following: - opened a command prompt and ran SLIC_Toolkit to determine the correct XRM-MS file for this machine (TOSINVTOSINV00.xrm-ms) - ran SLMGR -rearm which enabled me to boot with the 30 day grace period (this step was unnecessary, but I was feeling my way forward) - finally ran SLMGR -ilc C:\TOSINVTOSINV00.xrm-ms - WGA now reports Vista as genuine Many thanks to acrsn for his helpful and generous advice. This is a great forum - users of many other forums could learn from the way members here help others.