I have an hp 530 laptop that I have lost the original recovery disks for. I do have a dell oem disk that loads on but as it doesn`t recognise the hp bios and is looking to be activated in 30 days. Can i get around this by simply changing the key to an hp number ? If not is it just a matter of altering the $oem$ file in the disk to make it work for an hp machine ? The disk i have is the ultimate version if that helps any. Just new to this so apologise if this is very vague and foolish. cheers.
If you bought a laptop, even you don't have the recovery anymore, there should be a sticker on that laptop with the serial key, so that you can reinstall Vista again.
so if i were to use the proper serial number and import the cert. using the following command slmgr.vbs -ilc c:\hp.xrm-ms then should this be ok ?
I believe so, the Dell cds (they are just OS install disks, correct, not ghost images of the hard drive) don't have a cert on them, do they? If they do, just replace it with the HP cert. The cert would be located at \sources\$OEM$\$$\SYSTEM32\OEM or you can just reinstall from the disk using the COA serial number as Lenmaer says..