Mac OSX 10.6 cannot be installed on this computer

Hi everybody - this is my first post on here so please be gentle!
My kit:
13" MBP, Intel core 2 duo @ 2.26GHz. 2MB DDR3 RAM.
Current OS 10.5.8
I've been getting the "Mac OSX 10.6 cannot be installed on this computer" error message repeatedly whenever I try to upgrade to SnowLeopard.
Having spent a lot of time scouring these forums, I've tried pretty much every trick I spotted:
Formatted the disk and partitioned using GUID.
Resized the volume to be 130MB smaller than the partition size.
Tried booting from a USB image of SnowLeopard.
All of the above just take me back to the error message (which is now burned into my brain!!).
I do have a full TimeMachine backup which has been very handy with all of this experimentation.
Now here's the thing - my copy of 10.6.4 is a 'grey' label one. It is for the 13-inch MacBook Pro (which I have), but wasn't issued specifically for my machine. It's labelled "(c) 2010" which suggests it was made for a more modern MBP as my machine is from 2009.
From other threads, some people say that the disks are 'hardware locked' to specific machines. Others say that the more modern installation disks aren't so fussy. Do you think this could be the source of the problem? Having bought these genuine 10.6.4 disks, I'd hate to shell-out for the retail version of SnowLeopard only to find it hits me with the same dreaded error message!
Many thanks for any light you can shed on this for me.

Actually I bought the disk off eBay, but it is definitely genuine and since it was for the 13" MacBook Pro (which I have) I thought (having read the caveats about disks being hardware specific) it ought to be useable.
It's definitely a genuine set as it came with the full "Apple" packaging, booklet, wallet and even the two white Apple-logo stickers that they stick in there for some bizarre reason. Yes, I did notice (having received the disks) that there's a statement on them regarding them not being for resale, but the seller didn't happen to mention that on his auction (yeah - go figure!).
At the time of purchase I thought they were specifically for my hardware. Seeing the "2010" mark on the disks was a bit of a 'raised-eyebrow' moment, but I just find it hard to believe that the discs are being so 'touchy' given that they are for the correct model MBP, just separated by one year.
In fact, as I touched-on in my original post, some contributors to this discussion forum went as far as to say that you could even install cross-platform with the discs for more-recent hardware. I know that not everybody gets these things right when discussing stuff, but I'm just surprised that there's such a wide range of opinions regarding this.
If there are no further ideas, I'll have to put it down to experience and go buy the retail version. If anyone has any further advice or experiences of this issue, positive or negative, I'd still be glad to hear from them though.
Thanks all for the input so far.

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