when I try to reinstall and repair windows, wrong version error

Win 7 Home Premium will not finish booting. The splash screen just starts showing a little color, when it goes to choice of system repair or start windows normally. If normally is chosen the same choices repeat. If repair system, no solution is found. Next is an option of 7 choices to manually repair. None advance the cause.


History; bought off craigslist. Believe I may have foolishly bought a computer with illegal Win7 Home Premium OS. Downloaded Win 7 Home Premium iso from Microsoft link. After I installed the key previously used and Microsoft rejected it. I had one more key from a update 3 pack and it worked.


Later I decided to upgrade the BIOS, but did not BU the old BIOS. That was when the booting problem started.


Now when I try to reinstall and repair windows, wrong version error. Help

Probably a bad BIOS update. Get into your BIOS and reset the settings to default, save and exit. See if it helps.

Also you could try popping open your case, taking the CMOS battery out, waiting for half an hour and then placing it back. This also resets BIOS to factory defaults along with the loss of date and time which need to be set after performing this step.

Hope it helps.

"Probably a bad BIOS update. Get into your BIOS and reset the settings to default, save and exit."
Default BIOS settings did not change anything.
Other things I have tried: Replaced HD with one cloned 2 weeks ago. No help.
Run AVG Live CD to look for virus. No help.
Works great from another HD where I have Linux Mint 14 installed.
I want to recover my programs and data from win 7.
Could I buy another version of windows and upgrade to save programs and data? If so what version?
I feel like I have already purchased 2 versions of windows, although the first was probably counterfeit.

Don't have much idea, can you describe the 'wrong version error' a bit more?

Windows 7 Home Premium x64 RTM X15-65733.iso from Digital River did not work. Wrong version. I thought that was the version I installed. What other versions are there.

Please describe the error a bit more. Where and when do you get this error? Posting a photo of the error if possible would be a lot better.

System recovery options from Win 7 Home Prem X15-65733. This version of windows is not compatible with the version of windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disk that is compatible with this version of windows.

Purchased this computer from Craigslist, the goggled key supplied tracks to win 7 Home Premium Alienware OEM version. Don't know if that helps. Microsoft let me activate the computer with a win 7 Home Premium key purchased at Sam's. Then I updated the BIOS and I was locked out.

Both are 64 bit. I installed 64 bit versions of software when available.

Why are you trying to repair? You should perform a clean install using the 'Install' button that appears on the wizard after you boot from the ISO.