How do recovery CD's work?

Is the serial key for the operating system built in the Recovery CD or is it in your computer? Like if I go to XP from Vista and I don't have Vista recovery CD's and I order them, will I have the same key as I had before in Vista?

 

The manufacturer basically copied whatever data was on your hard drive before you received it and burned that to a cd so there's no real installation (and therefore, no keys) involved, you just have to wait about 10 minutes for you computer to copy over your existing partition with the recovery data.

Since you didn't get a CD, my best guess is that you have a separate recovery partition on your hard drive. How you would accesst that will depend on the manufacturer, but a recovery partition is the same as a disc so there's no difference "key"wise.

 

I'm saying my computer came with Windows Vista and the recovery cd's it came with are for XP. I purchased a new set of recovery cd's from Lenovo for Windows Vista. Does that mean I will have a new key?

 

I'm not sure then, it wouldn't affect the user either way since you wouldn't have to enter in any keys.

And why would Lenovo send you an XP disc for a vista machine?

 

No, from previous experience you can find the OS key on the bottom of your laptop. There is a thread on a freash installation of Vista onto your laptop that can give you more details.

The XP DVD is part of the Windows XP Downgrade Program for customers that were having too many issues with Vista. I'm pretty sure that there are two keys, one for Vista and one for XP.

 

Lenovo uses a VLK (Volume License Key). This essentially means that all Lenovo laptops use the same Windows key.

When you use the Lenovo Recovery Disks, it basically just copies the image onto the laptop. The serial is already entered and activated in Windows. This is the same for both XP and Vista.

Keep in mind that the serial number on the Windows sticker (under your laptop) is different than the VLK serial number. This is because the Windows licensing agreement requires each laptop to have their own unique serial number. Because of the difficulty and inefficiencies of entering a unique serial number for every new laptop built, Lenovo just uses a VLK. This goes for other computer manufacturers as well (HP, Gateway, Sony, etc.).

 

Thinkpad BIOS has a SLIC table that contains strings that match a xrm certificate. When you do recovery, it will install that certificate and Vista will make a connection with the BIOS, authorizing product activation.