BleepingComputer.com: Cant reinstall Vista with master recovery disk

I have a Packard Bell imedia 2423.It has nVidia GeForce 8400GS,Amarillo 2 motherboard,AMD Phenom 9500, DVD dual layer drive
and a Seagate Barracuda 7200 250GB hardk disk.It came pre-installed with Windows vista home premium.

I had problems with corrupt files and not knowing much about computers i got my friend to have a look at it. I wish i hadn't.He
took the last resort and without my consent reformatted it and installed an illegal copy of Windows vista ultimate on it(at the
time i didn't have a recovery disk).I ended up with a computer stuck in reduced functionality mode and in despair. I bought a
DVD master disk from Packard Bell and hoped i could fix my PC and return to my legal copy of Windows Vista home premium.

My hard drive seems to have two partitions.Things have not gone smoothly though. I chose the recovery option from the master disk.
It seemed to go ok until it told me to take the second disk out and the computer restarted. It then went to "start of the INITIALISE
phase of the process" window.It seemed to be installing but then froze on 14% of installation and the HDD light stopped blinking.
I aborted and it took me to Windows Boot Manager screen and left the following message:
File: \Boot\BCD
Status:0xc000000f
Info: An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration

I tried the "windows and smart restore" option on the master disk.When the computer restarted i changed the boot priority to boot from
HDD first.It froze again on 14% of installation and i pressed ESC and was left with a window saying
"The unattend answer file contains an invalid product key.Windows installation cannot proceed without a valid product key".

Im not sure what i can do to rectify it and would appreciate any expertise or advice from anyone.

Many thanks

Hi SImonFoot,

See if this will help: http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben...mp;x=7&y=13

Zllio