[Znod]

Humm? I did a repair install of Vista, without installing any updates, on my Dell Laptop and was "told" that my Vista is not genuine. I could not login and was only given options for activating Vista.

As I recall, the first was to re-enter my product key (I entered it when installing). No luck; again I was told that my Vista is not genuine.

I went to the next option--the over the phone option--and called the number given. I forget what the numbers displayed on my screen were called, but there were about 10 sets of 6 numbers (or something like that). I had to verbalize them to the machine on the other end of the line doing the talking. Afterwords, the machine had me enter another batch of about 10 sets of 6 numbers--which it provided. Afterwords my Vista was declared genuine, and I could login, etc. However, the lower right corner of my screen (still) showed my Vista to be not genuine although "System" showed it to be genuine. I restarted, and all was OK.

Has anyone heard of this scenario occurring before? And, what's up with it?