activation key problems!! help please!!

hi all, here's the problem, I ran out of space on my 40gig so I went out
and bought a new 80gig sata drive, I ghosted all my stuff across to the
new drive and it boots up fine. left it last night turned on connected
to the net cause it was doing updates. logged on this morning and get
the activation screen come up and it says i only have 3 days to activate
it!! help!!


--
squeesy cheese

If you cannot activate Vista online, then you should be able to by the
phone.

I did that last time when I installed vista on the old hdd,
but shouldn't it already be activated cause I ghosted all my files
across the the new hdd?

Normally it would be, but with the hardware change it may have thought
that you installed it on another computer and is wanting you to activate
again.

So activate it.

i might ring Microsoft later and explain to them what's happened, thanks
for your help though!:D:D:)

I had the same problem after installing a new drive on my machine last week.
All I did was click the activation option. My ghosted image was actually
from October last year, this allowed me to go back to a complete clean
install rather than later images which had other software installed which I
didn't want. The activation went just fine over the internet. If you do
happen to get a refusal or a 'product key already in use' just select the
'telephone' option. This is an automated service so please listen carefully
to the instructions. If it still does not activate after you have gone
through the automated procedure then 'don't hang up' stay on the line and
you will be transferred to a 'real' person who will help you activate your
system.

PS: After activation don't forget to image your newly activated hard drive.

I'm glad everything went smoothly for you.

As I said in my original post, after installing my new hard drive I need a
completely 'clean' copy - one without all the additional software I had
installed during the months after a clean install. I could have used an
image I created a few days earlier, but as I had one from October of last
year which was as 'clean' as i was going to get it next to re-installing
from scratch I decide to use that one.