After using it for years I now get message on screen "Windows Vista Build 6002 This copy of Windows is not genuine "

Noel,

Victory at last!  Many thanks.

After a couple of other false starts I managed to get the right spaces where needed. I had indeed missed the one between cd % and finally right at the end between vbs -rilc.

I finally got the desired message : License files reinstalled successfully.

The first time I restarted I got the validation box but no telephone option, so I entered the product keyand voila activation was confirmed. I closed down the computer a second time as instructed. On restarting The black screen came up but the message about this copy of Vista not being genuine had disappeared. I have now replaced the black with a more colourful background.

So your instructions were fine - it was just that I am not familiar with the computer commands and was in new territory and made some elementary mistakes.

One question : when I selected Yes in Step 5 did I remove anything important which needs replacing?

cd   %windir%\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SoftwareLicensing

should all be on one line - even if it wraps itself (and yes, you need to hit the Enter Key after each instruction line) Make sure that there's a space between the cd and therest of the line, but no other spaces

The actual error message you got is interesting - as the dependencies appear to be the wrong way around.

Please run the following two commands and let me know what the response is

SC   QC   SLSVC

SC   QC   SLUINOTIFY

Noel: I seem to be getting nowhere fast!

I reached step 5 OK and received the following message"The following services are dependent on the Software Licensing Service. Stopping the software Licensing Service will also stop these services:SLUI Notification Service & Ready Boost - Do you want to continue (Y/N) I entered Y and was informed that The SLUI Notification Service service was stopped successfully.

I then entered step 6 and pressed the enter key to continue and was told

file name, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect

and was  returned to the beginning ie C:\Windows\system32>

Where am I going wrong?

I am assuming that after following instructions 6,7, 8,9 and 10 I should press the enter key before moving on to the next instruction

Just use CMD

Noel,

I found the Edit key but decided to delete the whole e-mail to be sure, as I didn't think there was anything that would help anybody. Your replies are the most important part of the exchange.

I started to follow your instructions but found a confusing selection of CMD files and none which was precisely CMD.exe. There were:

cmd    - windows command processor 60.6001.18000

cmdkey - credental manager command live utility

cmdl32  - microsoft connectionmanager autodownload 7.2.6001.18000

cmdkey.exe.mui

cmd.exe.mui

cmd132.exe.mui

I don't want to press the wrong one and screw  up the computer so which one must I click??

Sorry to be such a bore

Ceci