3 day activation extension possible for swapped machines?

You want to be VERY careful trying something like that.
OEM licenses are locked to the first motherboard they activate on - and cannot normally be moved. (MS appears to be enforcing this again now, after a few years fairly lax control)

With Windows 7, once you go out of grace period, the penalties are relatively minor - mostly consisting of black background and the on-screen notification.

The best thing to do is to ensure that you are still using the OEM_SLP Key (run MGADiag to check) with which it came pre-installed and just let it go out of grace, and do NOT attempt anything fancy in terms of activating or attempting bypass activation.

So long as it's no more than 30 days, even MSE will continue working - after that, it will shut down (with warnings)

Once it's back in the proper machine, you may need to simply validate at www.microsoft.com/genuine/validate or (at worst) apply the COA Key, to get back to a genuine status.

If the COA Key is in place already for whatever reason, then so long as you don't allow the system to activate, you should be OK (but if the motherboard has been replaced then all bets are off, although it should be a case of using telephone activation rather than anything else).

I don't know what Asus are like in terns of repairs - but when I had to send an Acer back to Dixons for repair, they sent it to Germany, and it came back with the wrong problem fixed, and the wrong OS on it - it was 8 weeks in all, and I ended up with a refund/replacement rather than the original machine.

Just had a thought; would this work? If I did an Anytime upgrade on #1 Home to Pro, could I restore the #1 drive to laptop #2 and change the Activation key to the #2 Pro's license? Then, when #1 was fixed/replaced, return the #1 disk to laptop #1 and restore #1's Activation key? Of course, if #1's mb was replaced, it'd be a phone call like before.

Another alternative would be to put Home on #2 instead of Pro (it's not activated yet); possible to do the same license swapping then? I put Pro on #2 only because I had already purchased a copy. Not on a domain; having Group Policy Editor & Remote Console would be nice, but not essential.

Edit: I know it sounds strange, but I'd purchased a couple of Anytime upgrades and Win7 Pros when they were on sale at NewEgg a year or so ago & haven't yet used them. Actually have plans now, but this laptop licensing thing has me reconsidering.

No - that would be OK on the way out, but when the upgraded system went back to the original one, you'd be unable to input the Upgrade key (unless it was a Full license, rather than an Upgrade)

As I say, you'd be best just living with the non-genuine problem rather than messing about with reactivations - unless all Keys involved are Retail ones.

If you leave the OEM_SLP Key there, then it cannot be activated by normal means and so is safe :)
That's why I'm a little wary of trying it if the COA_SLP Key is in use.

When activation fails, the system drops into a non-genuine state but pretty much continues to work as normal (apart from the nag, and the black background)


Basically, you need to use good backup procedures more than anything else , for disaster recovery - there's always the chance that it's the hard drive that will go rather than the motherboard (in fact it's much more likely, in a laptop!)