Genuine bought OEM now "not genuine"

whs said:

tom222 said:

whs said:

I do not quite understand - are you saying that you installed the OEM license on one system and later you used the same license on another system? If that is the case, you are out of luck. An OEM license has to stay with the system it was first installed and cannot ever be moved.

Ah no sorry if I wasn't clear,
I only ever installed it once on my custom built system in January 2010. However it's only yesterday that my PC booted with the "this copy of windows is not genuine" message; a good 7 months or so after I bought it! I had also already validated it as soon as I installed it in January and there were no problems at all, so I'm at a loss to understand what has happened :/

Sorry I confused the issue. But from your original posting, that was not clear - at least not for me. Hope you can get your money back. It may be one of those licenses where the product key is only good for a few months. We have seen those before. I believe those were MSDN distributions for testing purposes. So the Microsoft guy may be right.

Actually he did mutter something about MSDN but I don't know what that meant, and at this point the conversation was getting slightly heated so he wanted to end the call. So does that mean the copy is not genuine? As it did originally validate when I first bought it. Oh God what a nightmare :/

madtownidiot said:

Just the fact that you bought it online, whatever the source, greatly increases the likelihood of having been scammed into buying a counterfeit copy. Had you bought it off the shelf at a retail store, there wouldn't even be a question of it's legitimacy, but I would bet 99 of 100 times when WAT flags an OEM install as non-genuine, it's a false alarm. I've personally seen "windows not genuine" messages from 11 computers that came from the factory preinstalled with windows 7 in the last few months. Zero your HDD and reinstall windows, then call to have it activated and tell them you had a HDD failure. F*ck em if they can't take a joke is what I say.

Yeah I've been told by a friend that works with support! however I want to use it as a last resort as I have a lot of files and configuration settings for some of my programs that would be a pain to have to start again from scratch.
Also not sure how they'll appreciate the fact that my version is OEM so they might not be obliged to offer me a replacement :/ Thanks for everyone's replies so far! I am very appreciative

by downloading and burning a ubuntu live cd (or using uNetbootin to install it to a flash drive) you could use gparted to create a new partition, then move your files to it before zeroing the os partition &reinstalling windows, or just use the ubuntu installer to move the files to an external drive without having to install the OS itself.. even if your computer doesn't currently have a working OS on the HDD.. just an option if it comes to that. But if it is an msdn copy of windows, you will have to buy a new key in order to reactivate windows

This might help you How to Tell

Is the black screen letting you into Win7? It should not lock you out until it has offered you ways to make your Win7 Geniune. Being locked out with a suddenly black "non-geniune" desktop is more characteristic of a drive letter slipping during reimage or cloning.

If you are locked out, are you saying that you need to get to the Product Key you backed up to the computer? Your first step should be to try to insert that key and it isn't clear you are doing that, just calling MS to complain about the "non-geniune" message.

If you need to retrieve your files to find the key, you can do this from the install DVD using this method: Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console - Windows 7 Forums.url

If you cannot get to Computer>Properties activation link to try reinserting the key, then try Control-Alt-Delete to open the Task Manager, choose New Task, then try inserting the key and activating using the slmgr commands given here: SLMgr Commands and Options

try this #


1-877-696-7786 for M$