Product Keys
This guide was written with the assumption that methods described in Club VAIO forum threads for using the Windows product key from the sticker on the back of your PC would work in this slightly different scenario. My experience has been that following the instructions in this guide to the letter, I was unable to activate Windows after installation using the product key on my PC, although it happily let me install Windows. The Media Center CDs I used came from my MSDN Professional subscription, and I can confirm that the method described in this document works perfectly with the product key from that source. Because this works for me, I may or may not undertake further investigations into why the product key that came with my VAIO didn’t work – it could be the process I used to create the CD, it could be my product key itself, the CDs I used to make the custom operating system install image or it could be something else I haven’t thought of.
If you can shed any light on whether the methods described in this guide work for you using the product key on your PC and why that might be, please tell me via the Club VAIO forums so that I can update this document.