Web Talk

One of the biggest issue once you buy a laptop with Windows Vista installed is the difficulty you meet if you want to make a clean install of the above O.S. without all the crapware (trial softwares and other softwares you really didn’t ask for) the laptop come with. In fact the license key on the sticker under your laptop is not valid in most cases since it is provided by Microsoft to those companies such as : Dell, Hp to activate multiple computers. The only thing you can do once you have undegone a reinstall is to call Microsoft directly and go through a kind of phone-activation. Luckly for us there is small program called Activation Backup & Restore (ABR) letting you save the key and the activation and re-use it (on the same computer) to install Vista as many times as you want, without calling any Microsoft guy.

Here is the program. Here instead you can find the step-by-step procedure

Update: See my other article how to backup Vista activation here.