D630 needs new MB on Vista

If your machine originally had XP, there should still be an XP CoA on the bottom somewhere. Assuming you still have the CoA, you should be able to request an XP installation disk from Dell; they will most likely give it to you for free, if not for a small fee.

It's still illegal to sell you Vista without a CoA. You should seriously get on that dealer's case (especially if it wasn't an eBay seller). I dunno... threaten to report him or her to the police if you don't get a valid license?

 

Neither of them have any stickers on vista or XP

Sadly not I'm afraid..

T'was Ebay but it's also a shop so I will send them an email and see..I suspect they will just say "Err it had one when it left here...prove otherwise."

 

Update time ;-)

Had some movement with the help and assistance of "tmaxxtim"

I did what he suggested cloned the Hdd to my PC, got hold of a Dell pre-loaded Vista Ultimate disk. and run the disk.

On install It changed the existing dir from windows to windows.old (the usual) and loaded up a fresh copy.(plus one called windows.old000???)

I then run product key viewer and it found a serial number. cut/pasted and run 'activate' voila it is now a genuine copy of Vista ultimate !

my only concern is now the HDD is almost full with the two copies of windows and therefore less than tidy


I wonder if I format the HDD and run the install/serial number again then windows transfer back from my PC is the best way forward or maybe just delete windows.old and .old000

Cheers

Richard