Counterfeit Software

prc292 · 09 Jun 2009

First of all I appologize, i wasnt sure what category to place this topic under. I recently installed build 7137. Setup and activation (with Key i received from previous beta version) went smooth and everything has been working great for the past 4 days. out of nowhere today, i got a popup saying that i may be a victim of software counterfeiting. so i checked activation status and it's not available. it also says activation key not available. on the same popup it said that i am unable to receive optional updates. ive gone through many win7 builds now. this is the first time ive seen this. anyone else heard of this kind of problem or no a solution. it sucks i just got everything setup the way i want it. hoping to not do it all over again so soon.

thanks in advance for any help or advice.

Barman58 · 09 Jun 2009

The major cause of this type of issue has been the use of Hacks to remove or edit the watermark.

Have you removed or tried to remove the desktop watermark

another thing to check is that you say you used a key from the Beta set - Microsoft have issued a new set of keys for the Release Candidate (7100 and above). you may want to go to the Microsoft site and obtain a new key

prc292 · 09 Jun 2009

I did remove the watermark. It's kinda strange because the activation went fine. Is there anyway to fix this problem after the watermark is removed. Also if I do get another key, (and i did use this same key on 7100 for weeks) how could i reactivate. under windows activation, it just says not available.

Barman58 · 09 Jun 2009

As for the removal of the watermark - the only chance you have is if there is an Uninstall or reset option in whatever software you used to remove the watermark

If the option to change key is missing It may be possible to change this manually in the registry. I don't have any links to give you for this but a search should find instructions for at least vista which should work for Windows 7

If you cannot get this to clear you may want to try an upgrade install over your current one with a new key and see if that will work.

As a last resort you could try an in-place install (install a fresh copy of the OS to the same disk/partition without reformatting the drive/partition)

Both options should retain most of the set-ups you have applied