Clean Installation With An Upgrade Disk

My memory is lagging, so when I just installed W7 on a new hard drive on my secondary rig, I didn't enter the license key and unchecked the box for it to automatically activate. When I attempted to enter the key and activate it later, it said that I couldn't do a clean install with an upgrade disk.

I scanned through the tutorial, and it said that I should have entered the key during the installation, with the activation box unchecked. The question is can I salvage the installation, or do I have to start over?

Just a sec. Try entering the product key at the command line.

Open an elevated cmd, then type: slmgr -ipk <product key>

Hit Enter.

After key successfully installed message pops up (it may take a minute), type: slmgr -ato

Hit Enter.

Let us know.

After the first enter, it responded that simgr is not a recognized command.

seekermeister said:

After the first enter, it responded that simgr is not a recognized command.

Its slmgr (with an l), not simgr.

Ahh! I need to get my glasses checked. I found an old Paul Thurrott article that I have used in the past, and I still had trouble, because I'm not sure how to run CMD with elevated privileges?

Elevated Command Prompt

Thanks, I think that did the trick...at least it said that it was successful. I will have to wait to enter the key, until I get the WIFI connection, so that it can go online.