Install 7 on new hard drive with valid key, windows saying not valid

NoelDP · 29 Jul 2012

You still have the OEM_SLP Key installed - which CANNOT work with anything other than the manufacturer's recvery media.
You MUST change it to the one on the COA sticker
If you then have to activate by phone, use this method.

telephone activation (operator calls)
Click on the Start button
in the Search box, type
SLUI 4
and hit the Enter key
follow the instructions, but when asked which service you require by the telephone ansafone, do NOT reply - this should force an operator to respond, who can deal with you

gregrocker · 29 Jul 2012

The COA Product Key is unreadable:

However the laptop model ships with Win7 Home Premium 64 bit.

OP has Recovery disks but they won't run. Perhaps if he wipes the HD first with Diskpart Clean Command which sometimes solves the problem.

hrhartist · 29 Jul 2012

@greg, would a corrupt hard drive make corrupt recovery discs?

gregrocker · 29 Jul 2012

I doubt whether a corrupt HD would generate Recovery Disks but they could be corrupt, yet. Recovery disks can be unstable so running from Recovery partition is preferred.

How did you generate the Recovery Disks exactly?

hrhartist · 29 Jul 2012

gregrocker said:

I doubt whether a corrupt HD would generate Recovery Disks but they could be corrupt, yet. Recovery disks can be unstable so running from Recovery partition is preferred.

How did you generate the Recovery Disks exactly?

*from the failing hard drive, i made it from this:

Install 7 on new hard drive with valid key, windows saying not valid-capture.png

i first made 3 discs. 2 under the recovery, and 1 for the applications.
this time around, i am putting them to a usb drive, to see if that makes a difference.

I do believe there is a recovery partition. i exited off before i thought of writing down most of it, but when i booted the comptuer up, it said something along the lines of: HDDRECOVERY (Z: ) and it was wanting me to run a scan on it, when i did within a second it said it was unable to do it.
after googling it, i found another thread:
System recovery partition gone or not? Help
and, although his problem i'm guessing had something to do with him uninstalling linux, i noticed when he said it, my recovery partition is also only about a gig and some change, but i couldn't see it from my computer(as displayed in the pic below)
so i checked my disc management to see if there was really a recovery partition on the hard drive, this is what i found:

Install 7 on new hard drive with valid key, windows saying not valid-capture2.png

not sure if that is what you were looking for greg, but hoped it helped.
i will restart the comptuer to get that HDDRECOVERY prompt and post it on here.

gregrocker · 30 Jul 2012

Is this how you attempted to run Recovery? Toshiba HDD Recovery Utility

If it fails then it's likely GRUB ruined your hotlink to Recovery, but you can create a boot manager to boot Recovery:

First give the two Recovery partitions (first and third partitions shown in your screenshot) a drive letter in Disk Mgmt: Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

Then install EasyBCD boot manager, click on Add OS Entry tab, select WinPE tab, browse in Recovery folder to boot.wim or winre.wim after unhiding System and Hidden files in Control Panel>Folder options>View tab, Save boot entry. Reboot to dual Boot menu, choose RAMdisk to boot recovery.

click to enlarge

EasyBCD (free Download at bottom of page - no name or email required)
Accessing my restore partition

hrhartist · 30 Jul 2012

ok, i tried to change the drive letter on the 1.4gb on disk 0, but when i right click it, it only displays help. the 8.09GB partition at the end list the option, but it is greyed out, with only the option to delete the volume. C: is the only one i can right click to show the ability to change drive letter and paths...

and, i hope i didn't mislead you greg, but i never installed unbuntu, or linux on this machine, i only meant to say that i wasn't able to see my recovery partition in my computer, but i saw it in my disk management console.

hrhartist · 30 Jul 2012

hrhartist said:

ok, i tried to change the drive letter on the 1.4gb on disk 0, but when i right click it, it only displays help. the 8.09GB partition at the end list the option, but it is greyed out, with only the option to delete the volume. C: is the only one i can right click to show the ability to change drive letter and paths...

and, i hope i didn't mislead you greg, but i never installed unbuntu, or linux on this machine, i only meant to say that i wasn't able to see my recovery partition in my computer, but i saw it in my disk management console.

ok, i think that i got it...i went into disk part typed: list volumes. when i saw it was hidden, i typed: select volume #. then i typed: assign.
this assigned the letter, so i am going to finish up the instructions, and post back on here, where it got me.

hrhartist · 30 Jul 2012

greg, i spoke too soon. it will let me get a drive letter(but still says the partition is hidden) from the 1.4GB. it won't let me set a drive letter for the 8.09GB partition.
and when i went to boot from that winpe i created, it gave me:
windows found problems with your computer startup options. do you want to apply repair and restart your computer
i went to the view details, and it gave me this:

Install 7 on new hard drive with valid key, windows saying not valid-img_1541-1-.jpg

*isn't longhorn what vista's code name was?
i also noticed, that both those partitions are empty, and i am hoping that it wasn't something i did?

NoelDP · 30 Jul 2012

A Vista partition for the Recovery partition is normal (as was XP for Vista!, and Win98 for XP!<g>) - but I've never bothered delving into it.
I assume that the disk creation process also verified the disks after burning them - so they should be a faithful copy of what's on the HD. The problem is whether they also check against known hashes, or just against the HD content.

(Sorry about the confusion with the COA - I'd been in front of the box for 18 hours again, and was thinking of a different thread)