Question about if I reformat

S

Sean89

New Member
Now Ive reformatted before, but heres my situation I bought a notebook from Alienware a couple months back. A little bit after vistasp1 was released I wanted to reformat but realized they never gave me the operating cd. So I called them up they sent me a new one I'm just concerned that Ill have problems activating it (yes I have the code# under my computer) but will this cd work if it does/doesn't have sp1 installed or not? Cause I don't want to reformat then find out I have problems activating vista...Thanks if you can help.
 
You shouldn't have any problems at all. It should activate over the internet. If not activate over the phone and speak to someone. Explain to them what happened and they will provide you with an activation key. Just as long as you are using the same key with the same machine.
 
pensacol said:
You shouldn't have any problems at all. It should activate over the internet. If not activate over the phone and speak to someone. Explain to them what happened and they will provide you with an activation key. Just as long as you are using the same key with the same machine.
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Yea Ill definitely be using it on the same computer I was just wondering if the cd would still work even though its not an OEM cd, but it still came from the company where I got the computer from. Thanks for the help to :)
 
since you got the activation number you're ok. you also can download windows fron the web, burn the iso on a dvd and use your activation code after installing
 
since you have the serial no then you are ok. you can also download windows from the internet, burn the iso on a dvd and install it using your existing code :)
 
i'm pretty sure they'll send you a RECOVERY CD which includes all the junk (limited trial software and ads) that came with your setup whn you opened the box. that's how it is nowadays.
 
dznutz said:
i'm pretty sure they'll send you a RECOVERY CD which includes all the junk (limited trial software and ads) that came with your setup whn you opened the box. that's how it is nowadays.
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Yea they SHOULD of, but they didn't and I realized this a couple months after I got my computer so they wanted me to pay for it. So I just told them my hdd crashed :) and got a new cd and hdd.
 
nowadays it's not uncommon for some models not to come with a recovery cd pre-made by the manufacturer. instead they want you to make a copy from the hidden/non-hidden recovery partition using their supplied software pre-installed in the laptop. that's why they wanted to charge you [the standard 20 bucks?] for the manufacturer made disk. but if you complain hard enough they'll give in as people aren't familiar with this new procedure.
 
Exactly as posted above! Only one thing, the recovery disks will not let you reformat but just do a full restore. You can make the disks yourself too as my HP came with the software to do so.
 
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