invalid product key on vista startup

[tangomouse]

i got a call today to sort out a newsh pc ,it appears that yesterday his pc automaticly updated ,after a reboot he gets the msg "invalid product key" ,now this is a genuine oem hp desktop ,he contacted hp with no help ,he then contacted mircosoft with no help ,am just wondering if anyone is aware of any new updates that do this.... btw i sorted his pc

[Flubug]

This sounds interesting. Mind elaborating on how you solve the problem? I believe it could be a good reference for other members as well.

[tangomouse]

simple! boot into safe mode ,backed up all his important files and used the hp restore to restore it back to factory setting ,and turned off auto updates ,but however i did try the vista loader v3 but that failed in safe mode

[Flubug]

So you don't really know what caused it other than the update eh? Could it be a bad update? Or maybe there are issues with the product key from the start. And now you disabled the auto update, how will you proceed from here? Will you leave it like this?

Edit:
I did a quick search. I found this. I wonder if it could be of any help.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;931573

[tangomouse]

no its only temp, and updates can be downloaded manualy ,i cannot see a bad update causing product key to fail

[Flubug]

Even if you choose to download the updates manually, wouldn't the problem reoccur again? Since you said the problem arises after an automatic update. Unless you know which update that causes it, which then you can choose to ignore that update by manually updating, else the issue will still be there.

[tangomouse]

cheers for that, having read that artical it does sound simlar , eventho i tried to activate vista with the sticker ,but got same invalid key error ,btw it was vista sp1 ,like i said its new pc

[tangomouse]

like that artical says "Although this problem rarely occurs" ,it maynot happen again ,but saying that it seems that the artical is pre sp1