I recently bought an HP laptop with vista home premium, and dont like using the recovery partition or recovery dics i made due to it being bundled with a bunch of software i dont want. I bought an OEM version of vista home premium to upgrade my dell computer a few months back. Well I used that same disc to format my HP laptop, and entered the product key that pertained to the HP. When it came time to activate windows on the new HP, it would not work despite using the product key that pertains to the HP laptop and being the same version of windows.I have 2 vista licenses (product keys) , one OEM dic and one with the HP OEM laptop. Why didnt it work to being with? I want to know if I were to use a FULL version (Not OEM) of vista to format my laptop will it allow me to activate it using the product key on the bottom of my laptop? If not, any way around not using the recovery discs/partition with bundled software?

Thanks!!