W7 clean install on family member's machine, activation issue.

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stop!theradio

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Jul 13, 2007
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Alright, I have a family 3 pack upgrade license and discs for Windows 7 Home Premium. I just put my brother in law's computer together yesterday and got it up and running with my 64-bit disc of Home Premium (clean install), and, as expected, it's giving him 30 days to activate. I didn't want to give him any of my licenses (because I'm a greedy bastard like that. Also, they're already used on my own machines at home), so I told him he's got 30 days to buy a Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade license.

All was fine until today - he told me he got a "this Windows is not genuine" popup and it's asking him to activate right now. How is that possible? I completely skipped even putting in a license key for him after install, so he should have 29 left to activate. At least, that's my understanding.

Any info would be good. Thanks!
 
I seriously doubt he even knows what that is.

EDIT:

Me: Hey, on Windows 7, you didn't use an activation crack, did you?

Him: a what? I haven't even put any programs yet if thats what youre asking

:p
 
eh, microsoft has released some mandatory updates designed to break the the windows activation hacks. I think it is probably the source of your conflicts. Doubt there is much you can do about it. I think he should still probably be fine, er, for 2 hours at a time, or whatever it does....
 
Interesting. I'll pass along the info. He was supposed to order a copy of W7 along with a barebones package I linked him to on tigerdirect, but apparently "forgot". I bet he was trying to get a freebie out of me. I'll just tell him to suck it up and make the order. :p

Thanks again.
 
actually no, when installing win7 without a license it gives u 3 days to activate your pc.
 
Since this clean install was just done and he apparently hasn't installed anything (that you're aware of) the suggestion would be start over again - it's a bitch but, there's got to be some reason this is happening and it's obviously not going away so, time to wipe that puppy and do it again and see what happens.

I've never seen the "not genuine" thing come up on thousands upon thousands of installations in my experience unless some tampering is going on somewhere... ;)
 
No tampering whatsoever - unless he's lying to me about not trying to activate Windows somehow. I really don't see that being the case, though. There IS a second hard drive from their old Dell (via IDE) inside the machine, though. It hasn't been wiped yet, it was the C drive which has their Windows XP install. Could that have anything to do with it? It's basically their backup of files. I suppose I'll try copying over the files to an external drive and then reinstalling W7.
 
Update!

Just got back from his house - I tried booting without the old C drive connected and the issue went away, and now says it has 28 days to activate. Odd, but at least I know what the issue was - at least partially. Still strange, though.
 
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