Invalid CD key from Student Upgrade

This is a little complicated, so it bear with me for a minute.

I bought the Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Upgrade kit from software4students.com -

Windows 7 Professional - Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition

This is a Microsoft approved distributer of Microsoft licenses, and my license key for Windows 7 as an upgrade is valid.

On installing Windows 7 onto my laptop, I thought "My Windows Vista installation is taking up 40gigabytes of space, I'll just format and install!". This led to me being unable to use my product key to activate my Windows 7 installation, since although it required a clean install, it didn't want my install to be clean of a previous Windows installation.

The course of action is obviously to reinstall Vista and then install Windows 7 on top of that. The only problem with that course is that my Vista key is not being accepted by the Vista installation at all. The Vista Home Premium 32-bit operating system simply won't allow me to install it on my computer. Period. It says the OEM key which is on the bottom of my case is not a valid key.

So I have a Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Upgrade currently installed, but impossible to activate, and a Vista Home Premium key that is invalid. I'm in a big catch-22. Any suggestions?

Sure,

If you can still boot into 7, merge this .reg file ( just dble click it and ok the warning.)

MBIzero.reg

Then open an admin command prompt ( type cmd in start search box - when the black box pops up, rt click it and select run as admin )

At the prompt ( this bit > ) type

slmgr -rearm

Then press Enter - click Ok - close command prompt , then restart the pc.

When you get to the desktop, press the Windows+Pause/break keys together.

At the bottom of the window that opens, click "Change product key".

Then type in your 7 product key , and Activate online.

That worked like a charm! Thank you very much Sir!

You're welcome.

SIW2 said:

Sure,

If you can still boot into 7, merge this .reg file ( just dble click it and ok the warning.)

MBIzero.reg

Then open an admin command prompt ( type cmd in start search box - when the black box pops up, rt click it and select run as admin )

At the prompt ( this bit > ) type

slmgr -rearm

Then press Enter - click Ok - close command prompt , then restart the pc.

When you get to the desktop, press the Windows+Pause/break keys together.

At the bottom of the window that opens, click "Change product key".

Then type in your 7 product key , and Activate online.

LoL, I shoulda asked you this last friday as I ran into same issue. I actually called up MS Support line and went thru 3 different people before getting a tech who did a live support in to put in some codes and do the -rearm thing to allow it to let me activate from a clean install.

I had to bitch at the 2nd guy I talked to, to get to tech support. First he tried telling me multiple times that since this was an upgrade version I had to "buy a new full copy". After calling BS on this several times and explaining more times that I owned XP legally and I just wanted to activate Win7 instead of having all the extra BS of going thru XP install w/ the bloat left on the system from that; did he put me thru to tech support.