Hi

I've been asked to help a lady who attempted to upgrade her laptop running Vista Home
Basic to Home Premium using the supplied "upgrade" disk that seems to come with most
machines.

Apparently she ran the disk and the "upgrade" appeared to work. She tell me she used
her credit card to pay for the upgrade and that everything worked fine. However the
laptop is now asking for a key. 

I suspect that this will have been emailed to her, but either she didn't enter it, or
possibly didn't activate it or something, but Vista now won't let her into the laptop
at all. She seems unsure of what exactly she did.

To make matters worse, she used a Hotmail address when doing the upgrade, so I
thought I'd access her email from my home and see if MS had emailed her the key.
Unfortunately she doesn't know her Hotmail password, so we're stuck. 

Phoning the MS "helpline" is hopeless - the call centre in India just goes over the
same script which gets us nowhere, or gives me a different number to call that just
gives me a different person with the same or similar script. I need to talk to
someone from MS that can actually have a conversation and not simply read
pre-prepared answers that don't match the problem.

I suppose using the restore disk would get the laptop working again, but she'd lose
the money she's presumably paid for the upgrade.

Any suggestions anyone, or can anyone suggest another group that might be more
appropriate for this problem?



TIA
-- 

Andrew Sayers

"Andrew Sayers" wrote:
> Hi
>
> To make matters worse, she used a Hotmail address when doing the upgrade, 
> so I
> thought I'd access her email from my home and see if MS had emailed her 
> the key.
> Unfortunately she doesn't know her Hotmail password, so we're stuck.

Hi Andrew

I think it would be worth pursuing the Hotmail account issue. The password 
can be reset. See:
http://hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/ua_info.asp

"If you forget your password go to the Password Reset Tool to choose another 
one and access your MSN Hotmail account."

Good luck!