Vista DVD and reinstalling.....

[redgtxdi]

So a couple years ago I built this kid an XP Pro PC and within the last year (while everything was working perfectly fine) he decides he wants to buy Vista from his teacher.

Well, he had a problem w/ it not starting up. He asked me to fix it and I was able to boot from his (definitely a backup DVDr) copy of Vista that his teacher sold him. There's no key on the DVD and he doesn't remember ever getting a key code from via paper/email/whatever so after booting his DVD, I let Vista repair itself and everything was fine until he got it home and it did the same thing.

I don't know what's up. I can do the same thing again, but there's obviously a problem. I'm tempted to format & reinstall XP Pro just to get rid of Vista.

I'm assuming his copy of Vista won't install without a key.

 

[Dahak]

vista will allow an install without a key, but it will not activate. sounds like the teacher hosed the kid without giving him the legit key with it too.
as for the problem, if its doing just a startup repair it could indicate a possible hard drive problem, but without knowing more on how its not starting up little more difficult
seeing as he does not have a key for vista, i would just format it and put xp back on it