Activation issue after clean install on new hard drive

mrbongo said:

Anthony said:

@mrbongo, I admire you Patience on this, most people would have given up and ended up hacking their System, makes you wonder how many people have actually bought pre-installed windows and ended up in the same situation.

Well Done!!

I think the most frustrating aspect is that if I owned a different brand of Notebook I could have simply made a call and used recovery disks available, the only task would be data retrieval.

If something is worth doing then it deserves a similar degree of effort.

If I hadn't come across the excellent help on here, I would still be sat scratching my head.

It's funny you mention that because I didn't want to discourage you since it's slightly different but was tempted to link the most egregious thread I've ever seen about OEMS which is still a top search result for Samsung: New laptop, changing partition disks?

It would be sweet justice is you worked with SIW2 to find a way to mount and run the Samsung Recovery partition, which we could see live on via Google to spite their tech support parody troupe which actually told Nicole she had to buy new licenses for ALL of the software is the reimaged her HD.

gregrocker said:

mrbongo said:

Anthony said:

@mrbongo, I admire you Patience on this, most people would have given up and ended up hacking their System, makes you wonder how many people have actually bought pre-installed windows and ended up in the same situation.

Well Done!!

I think the most frustrating aspect is that if I owned a different brand of Notebook I could have simply made a call and used recovery disks available, the only task would be data retrieval.

If something is worth doing then it deserves a similar degree of effort.

If I hadn't come across the excellent help on here, I would still be sat scratching my head.

It's funny you mention that because I didn't want to discourage you since it's slightly different but was tempted to link the most egregious thread I've ever seen about OEMS which is still a top search result for Samsung: New laptop, changing partition disks?

It would be sweet justice is you worked with SIW2 to find a way to mount and run the Samsung Recovery partition, which we could see live on via Google to spite their tech support parody troupe which actually told Nicole she had to buy new licenses for ALL of the software is the reimaged her HD.

God that experience sounds like a similar nightmare.

To be honest, how I felt about Samsungs 'assistance' was that this fine detail was almost small print that they don't tell people about and when you find out, it's too late.

Having read over some of the manuals and guides that came included with my laptop, it seems that for some, they do supply the recovery disc (as in Nicoles case) and for others, your only hope is having the recovery partition and Samsungs Recovery solution.

The two go hand in hand so if you don't have one of these - or like me, you do but it's on a duff hard drive - then there is no recovery option.

I've always compared laptops capabilities when buying to make sure I'm not saving money but creating headaches by buying a cheap model that I will spend more time and money trying to mod. And while the R530 was probably at the cheaper end, it had what I needed so did not see this s**tstorm coming.

At the very least, I expect to be able to factory restore if everything goes wrong. And while I'm not averse to getting my hands dirty and figuring it all out, there's gotta be people out there with basic computer skills who just want to be able to pop in a disc and go through simple steps to recover their PC.

Telling people to buy new OS and software is poor advice. Imagine losing your house keys and a having to move house and buy replacement furniture.

There's also conflicting advice given by the retailer PC World as the person I spoke to said re:recovery disks that if my laptop was purchased less than 30 days ago (as Nicoles was) I could take it to store to have use of the Holy Grail Recovery Disc.

I guess in her case they knew that she'd already tried, the partition was gone and sensibly replaced.

Booooo Samsung! I used to really like your stuff but now I doubt I would buy again.

This is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night.

Ok, answers on a postcard for this one:

The aim here it to get the recovery partition from old drive onto new. New drive already has a system partition which boots into Windows 7. Does this override anything else that is on the drive at boot? Or does the boot menu dictate what goes first or give me the option before proceeding?

In other words, as long as I can get the recovery partition on there, the easy bit is telling it to boot?

mrbongo said:

This is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night.

Ok, answers on a postcard for this one:

The aim here it to get the recovery partition from old drive onto new. New drive already has a system partition which boots into Windows 7. Does this override anything else that is on the drive at boot? Or does the boot menu dictate what goes first or give me the option before proceeding?

In other words, as long as I can get the recovery partition on there, the easy bit is telling it to boot?

What benefit is there in having the recovery partition on the new drive? In my mind it was only to be able to restore a w7 installation that would be validated as genuine. You are now making images which can be used instead of the recovery partition to restore your system. If necessary (because of image restore failure) you could fresh install using the iso you downloaded and use the key you got from MS to validate it (don't let that tattoo fade).

The only thing I can think of that you're missing is the OEM bloatware that was initially installed on the machine. You can usually get that by downloading it from the OEM website if you really wanted it. But you would have to put that software through the paces to ensure it worked properly.

Or am I missing the point of your query? If I am, can you post a screenshot of your Disk Management window so we can see the two drives and their partitions? I'm thinking your machine will boot fine without the old drive and I can see no need to boot to the recovery partition (if that's what you're worried about).

Yes, I should have made it more clear that I think you're covered now with the backup images - against the possibility that it might turn out to be a one-use key.

I was only reminiscing about the epic Nicole thread and how then and now it would be great if SIW2's genius could be applied to finally learn how to mount and run the Samsung Recovery partition.

gregrocker said:

Yes, I should have made it more clear that I think you're covered now with the backup images - against the possibility that it might turn out to be a one-use key.

Very good point! Forgot about that one-use bit. How can it be determined?

How could one feel comfortable when first testing an image restore to ensure that it truly works? You would have to have a key that you know is valid or you have to do the test on a spare blank hard drive.

gregrocker said:

I was only reminiscing about the epic Nicole thread and how then and now it would be great if SIW2's genius could be applied to finally learn how to mount and run the Samsung Recovery partition.

I was hoping to see this through as well.

Sorry folks, was just thinking out loud.

If I get to a solution I will post again.

If the key is a one-use will I avoid activating again just by using the backup images?

The MGADiag shows:

Remaining Windows rearm count as: 3

So I guess 3 more activations using that code before it expires.

The lady on the phone did tell me to keep the key safe so I assume I can use it again.

I've used images to restore many machines, XP, Vista and 7 and have never had activation issues, including some machines being restored multiple times. It never fails as long as the drive being imaged is relatively healthy.

It would be much better to hear this from Noel, but the way I understand it that re-arm count has to do with installs that have not been validated. It allows a number of 30 day grace periods of use before being marked as non-genuine. I'm guessing that in your case it would be three more 30 day grace periods if it wasn't already validated.