I've got Vista Home Premium running on a spare hard drive just for testing purposes. Tomorrow I upgrade my computer and would like to install Vista on my main hard drive.Question is, how will it activate? Will it already see me as having Vista already active? How can I un-activate the test version? This was a full install onto a blank disk, so I can't uninstall it.Any help appreciated.

Microsoft has been fairly lenient with re installations but you should know that they will only allow one activation per license at a given time. Automatic activation in this case is almost an impossibility since the hardware changes will probably differ from your previous machine.When you call for activation, the first and usually foremost question will be: Is this installed on more than one computer? If the original version is on a spare hard drive and not connected to any machine, you could answer no. However, if you're planning on running two instances of the same license on two separate machines, your answer should be yes and the call center will refuse activation.The morality/legality of the answer is in your court.Regards,Jim KarnNOTHING is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

Thanks for the reply. The version on the spare hard drive is not going to be used (the drive is way to small for anything other than the OS). It will only be running on one computer (Honest!!).I guess I will have to phone up then and explain the circumstances.

Microsoft has been nothing but helpful with my moving to different hardware. The only question that they asked was the one I stated above.You should have no problem at all with the new install. Best of luck.Regards,Jim KarnNOTHING is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.