Vista cannot activate

I have Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade Academic Retail boxed, which I
installed on one PC which originally had Windows XP Media Center Edition
2005. Vista stayed on that computer for a few months. After the few months, I
got a PC without an O/S and since it is faster than the original PC that
Vista is installed on, I decided to 'transfer' my license from my older PC in
which Vista is installed on and activated to the newer PC by installing
Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005 back on the old PC. However, I found
that I cannot activate Vista on the new PC despite wiping the hard drive of
the old PC and installing Windows XP MCE. At first, I saw that I have 30 days
left for activation on the new PC, then after a week, I saw I had zero days
to activate. This morning, I looked and it says I have 3 days to activate,
and this evening, it says I have 2 days till automatic activation. I tried
activating since it said zero days of activation till today, but to no avail.
It says my product key is already in use despite this PC the only one which
has Vista installed.

Hi,

Since you've already done an automatic activation of this license, you need
to phone this one in. Use the phone activation, and if the automated
sequence fails, hang on the line to get a real person to assist you with
activating the installation.

By the by, if the MCE you installed on the new machine is the same license
you reinstalled on the old machine, then you cannot use it to validate the
upgrade as that particular license is in use on the old machine. Your
upgrade license for Vista will subsume the license on the upgraded machine
and it (the license that was upgraded) cannot be used elsewhere. An upgrade
license requires inclusion of the license of the upgraded product.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"comtastic7" <comtastic7@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:421E0F90-29C6-4274-AAC2-053FF7A790F3@microsoft.com...
>I have Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade Academic Retail boxed, which I
> installed on one PC which originally had Windows XP Media Center Edition
> 2005. Vista stayed on that computer for a few months. After the few
> months, I
> got a PC without an O/S and since it is faster than the original PC that
> Vista is installed on, I decided to 'transfer' my license from my older PC
> in
> which Vista is installed on and activated to the newer PC by installing
> Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005 back on the old PC. However, I found
> that I cannot activate Vista on the new PC despite wiping the hard drive
> of
> the old PC and installing Windows XP MCE. At first, I saw that I have 30
> days
> left for activation on the new PC, then after a week, I saw I had zero
> days
> to activate. This morning, I looked and it says I have 3 days to activate,
> and this evening, it says I have 2 days till automatic activation. I tried
> activating since it said zero days of activation till today, but to no
> avail.
> It says my product key is already in use despite this PC the only one
> which
> has Vista installed.