How I fixed my windows vista validation issue

• General discussion

• 

  

  0

  Sign in to vote

  I have been watching this Forum for months looking for a solution to my Windows Vista problem. Like a lot of others on here, I purchased a desktop computer 2 years ago with Vista already pre-installed. It worked fine until a few months ago, when I got a message on start up telling me that changes had been made to my computer and that I needed to re-activate Windows. Yet, when I installed the product key from the side of my computer, it would tell me the key was invalid. I tried everything elses suggested on this forum, such as starting in safe mode and using system restore to roll the computer back to a date before the message started to appear. It did not work. Nothing would work. All I could do on the computer was open an IE window and surf the net and nothing else. Just when I was about to give up and throw my computer out the window, I did something different, and I dont know if this is co-incidence or not, but it worked. While my computer was NOT CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET, I hit F6 repeatedly as my computer started (this was purely by accident as I was actually trying to get into the computer using safe mode but pressed F6 instead of F8). I got a different menu with an option down the bottom to do some sort of memory test. So I did it. It took a while but it did some testing and then re-started the computer. Once again, I got the re-activate windows message again. I decided once again (after the millionth time) to try entering my product key again. I almost fell off my chair when it said "activating windows... please wait" and then "windows has been successfully activated". !! Now I dont know whether the memory test thing did something or whether its because I entered the code while NOT BEING CONNECTED to the internet (previously I had always had the internet connected). Anyway something has changed and Windows is now activated. I have re-started my computer about 10 times since and it is working perfectly again.  I dont know if this solution will work for anyone else but i have been SO desperate to get my computer up and running again, that I thought if I can possibly help someone else in the same situation, then its even better! I now have my fingers and toes crossed that my computer will keep operating although I must say my faith and trust in this computer is VERY low now :(

  Saturday, May 8, 2010 3:46 AM