  Ok, I went back and looked at my other laptops and turns on the first one had the COA removed. Now that 90% of my problem is solved, what do I do with the one with the missing COA? I can get Windows 8.1 installed but I am not sure how well these old machines can handle OS 8   Windows 8.1 has been streamlined a lot and should run much better on these than Vista. I have Windows 8.1 32 Bit on my Latitude D820 which is probably got similar hardware specifications to yours. The only issue I had was with Bluetooth because Toshiba didn't update the Bluetooth stack for the Dell Wireless 350 or 360 card. I don't use Bluetooth much so never really bothered but may swap it out later for a 355 card.
My work has several Dell Latitudes that need to be restored to the pre-installed Vista OS. They are currently on a different OS (if you must know, someone put Windows 7 on them without a key. That person no longer works for us due to incompetence). Is there any way we can find out the product key of the Vista OS? there is no sticker on the bottom of the laptops, just the service tag codes.
need windows product key