Not geniune - Trying to remedy with purchased OS

nitroman84 said:

gregrocker said:

Bill2 said:

If the licensing files are messed, simply changing the key will not work.

So it would need a Repair Install at the minimum to repair files added by the crack?

What about possible changes made to the boot sector? Should the HD be zeroed as a precaution?

Personally that is how I do any install, normally a secure erase with parted magic. It may be overkill but I like to start with a clean disk.

Thank you all for the input. I chose to go with the repair option, and everything has activated and all is well, for now.

Thanks for the additional information on rebuilding, if it comes down to it, I'll wipe it out following the suggestions above. I've never used utilities in rebuilding or reformatting, so by "secure erase with parted magic" is this a reference to a secure erase function within the applicaiton partition magic?

I would use free Partition Wizard bootable CD if you want a 3rd party app with a graphical interface to wipe the HD, repartition, etc. We have used it here to help with hundreds of operations without failure.

You can wipe the HD before reinstall using the Win7 DVD by this method: SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

Hopefully the Repair Install will be sufficient but don't settle for less than perfect performance with Win7.

Greg, sorry I missed your previous post. Without being too elaborate, a crack will either replace/remove licensing files or load a SLIC table into memory at the time of boot (but before windows loads). With the latter, uninstalling the crack may be sufficient but if the files are messed real bad by the former, a repair install is advisable.