Question about operating system discs from HP.

[thecoolnessrune]

Hey guys, I got my laptop back in September of '07 and it had Home Premium 32 bit on it. Fast forward to now and I got in on the Microsoft feedback program and got a copy of Vista Ultimate. So now I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 bit. But straight from microsoft. I like the idea of having a recovery partition plus I'm thinking of selling the laptop and would like it to ahve the HP OS. My question is can I call to get recovery discs, tell them I want the 64 bit version, and will the recovery discs work with my Ultimate key?

Second question, I still have the Home Premium 32 bit key from HP. But I dont ahve any discs. Can I install it using a normal Microsoft disc? Can I install the key on something other than a laptop?

 

[corkyg]

First question - if you sell your HP laptop, it would have to be with the original 32 bit Home installed. That is wedded to the machine for recovery/reactivation purposes. As for the upgrade to Ultimate, I have done the exact same thing - but that makes the original recovery disks moot. The current recovery is now using the 64 bit Ultimate you got from Microsoft with whatever key made it work. Your best solution would be to simply backup or clone the entire drive to a duplicate drive and be done with it.

Second Question: - your HP key should work on that machine with Vista Home from any disk source. You can only legally install that key on the HP laptop - it is a marriage.