I have here a broken (but not for long) gateway laptop.

The hard disk drive is bad because my genius of a buddy here dropped it. So we've got a new hard disk drive here and I'm about to install it. However we don't have the gateway recovery discs, or obviously the recovery partition on account of that the old hard disk drive is completely bricked.

No problem, we'll just use a regular Windows Vista Home Premium install CD... or so I would normally think.

Problem is, the last time I tried to activate Vista using an OEM product key and a non-OEM CD, it didn't work so well.

Is there a way that I can insert an OEM certificate into the OS or onto the CD to make it able to be activated with the gateway OEM key?

As far as I know you can not make an OEM key work (legally) on retail version of Windows OS.

Figured something out that looks like it will work:

1) Install OEM certificate corresponding to your manufacturer (Gateway in this case...)
http://www.tipandtrick.net/2008/win...e-xrml-xrm-ms-digital-license-auto-installer/

2) Change product key to the correct SLP key.
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/2581-Vista-OEM-SLP-keys

3) ??? (Wait a moment... also it is worthy of note that I was connected to my router via an Ethernet cable and thus to the internet at this point.)

4) Profit. (Windows is activated.)

Update: It appears to have worked. Windows shows as genuine and is receiving updates.