This is not the sort of thing you hear about every day, so it is worth mentioning. Al Menard at Overclockers.com upgraded to Vista but was stopped by an unexpected problem when doing a fresh install.

What was more unexpected was the solution he was given by Microsoft Tech support: to look online for one of the many Vista activation bypass cracks.

Menard took the advice and was successful in getting things to work. He has a legitimate key, but Vista just doesn't know about it.

It's amazing anyone at Microsoft would actually suggest piracy as a solution for getting around an installation issue.

Fully story at Overclockers.com