Windows Vista Recovery Disks

I would like to know if anyone knows of a workaround to load Vista on another computer from the recovery disks.
My HP computer broke and it went out of warranty. I determined that it was a bad motherboard. I bought a new motherboard but it was too large, by a few mm, and didn't fit on the screw holes. I bought a cheap new case and transferred all of the hardware from the HP case to the new case and installed the new motherboard. I reformatted the hard drive and put Win XP on it. It works great now.
One problem now is the Windows activation has elapsed. HP sent me recovery disks (with Vista) but won't load because it doesn't recognize the motherboard (I guess). The error message is that "It is not an HP computer anymore". How can I put the Vista O/S from the recovery disks back onto the hard drive?
Or I can just wait for Windows 7!

The recovery discs are bios coded, meaning it is looking for a HP motherboard bios. Sorry, but you're out of luck.

Thank You for your straight forward reply. I won't buy another HP computer.

It has nothing to do with HP/Compaq as a brand. Sony, Acer, Emachines, Toshiba, Dell, etc all use bios encoded restores or install discs.

What you should have gotten is an OEM restore disk. They will install on any brand system.

I bought it at a big California computer store. It was bad when I bought it. I set it up when I got home and it could get internet access about 60% of the time. I called HP Tech Support (in India) and they didn't know what the problem was. At that time I wasn't sure either.
Personal circumstances dictated that I move to Washington for a new job while my family stay in Calif for awhile. My wife will try to get by with it while I take my "homebuilt computer"with me. She was complaining of the continued problem and I thought it might be the AT&T DSL we had. But it wasn't.
The HP was put back into the box for about 6mos. When my wife brought it to Washington It did the same thing. I determined it was the built in NIC. It was out of warranty by that time.
The rest of the story is in the other post.
Soooo...I'm not blaming HP for the recovery discs, it's the bad computer they sold me in the first place.

If it was bad when you bought it, then you should have returned/exchanged it right away.

A bad NIC can be replaced for $10-$50 or so.

It was BUILT INTO the motherboard. That means it is part of the mobo.

You can get a PCI NIC and just disable the onboard NIC.

Sorry, I didn't know what you were getting at.
Yes, that was part of my troubleshooting. I put a known good NIC card in the computer. Had the same problem. I didn't want to f*** with it anymore, so that's when I decided to get the new motherboard.
I think we've pretty much beat this topic to death. I'm out of here. Thanks to all for your advice.