Ok, here's the deal.
I work in retail as a tech, and we have a guy who's trying to pull a fast one on us. He's claiming that the CMOS reset we did to get his machine started has nuked his copy of Word 2000 (which comes shipped on the machine), and it won't accept his license key.
We've since found out (once he left, stating that he'll be bringing his machine in tomorrow) that he installed a pirated copy of Office 2000 Pro, and is probably going to have uninstalled it by the time the machine comes in. (However, System Restore never lies when it's Microsoft products
)
[Edit] BTW, I know the CMOS reset thing is BS, but we have to be a little flexible on this one.
So. He claims that he's lost the license key for Word 2000 and I just have this seriously strong hunch that he's going to bring in a friend's key for Word.
I know what the COA should look like with Packard Bells, but I want to know if the key he supplies us is an OEM or Retail key- that'll tell us in a snap if he's trying to get one over on us.
Can anyone tell me how to tell if a Word 2000 key is OEM or Retail? Do I need to call Microsoft, is there some way to easily tell, or is there a utility that can take license keys and output exactly what they're intended for?
Apologies for the long tracts of text, but I wanted to make it clear that I'm not a w4r3z m0nk3y, and I need to know in about 8-10 hours before I go into work to make his life hell (well, it's a perk of the job).
Any info is extremely gratefully received. Please bear in mind that I'm in the UK and thus any phone numbers to Microsoft will need to either be a UK number, or with a link showing where I can get the number for the UK.
Thanks guys!
I work in retail as a tech, and we have a guy who's trying to pull a fast one on us. He's claiming that the CMOS reset we did to get his machine started has nuked his copy of Word 2000 (which comes shipped on the machine), and it won't accept his license key.
We've since found out (once he left, stating that he'll be bringing his machine in tomorrow) that he installed a pirated copy of Office 2000 Pro, and is probably going to have uninstalled it by the time the machine comes in. (However, System Restore never lies when it's Microsoft products
)[Edit] BTW, I know the CMOS reset thing is BS, but we have to be a little flexible on this one.
So. He claims that he's lost the license key for Word 2000 and I just have this seriously strong hunch that he's going to bring in a friend's key for Word.
I know what the COA should look like with Packard Bells, but I want to know if the key he supplies us is an OEM or Retail key- that'll tell us in a snap if he's trying to get one over on us.
Can anyone tell me how to tell if a Word 2000 key is OEM or Retail? Do I need to call Microsoft, is there some way to easily tell, or is there a utility that can take license keys and output exactly what they're intended for?
Apologies for the long tracts of text, but I wanted to make it clear that I'm not a w4r3z m0nk3y, and I need to know in about 8-10 hours before I go into work to make his life hell (well, it's a perk of the job).
Any info is extremely gratefully received. Please bear in mind that I'm in the UK and thus any phone numbers to Microsoft will need to either be a UK number, or with a link showing where I can get the number for the UK.
Thanks guys!
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