This copy of Windows is not Genuine after cloning drive. Fix!

Long story... I had a Raid failure last night. After fixing the issue and restoring my Windows 7 Pro from a Ghost 15 Backup my machine boots up and displays a light blue screen with only a small water mark in thre bottom right corner which states "Windows 7, Build 7600, This copy of Windows is not Genuine." There was no start menu or any Icons. I was able to start the Task Manager via Ctrl+Alt+Del, and then Start explorer.exe and cmd. via New Task. I could not however use any installed programs. After 3 hrs on the phone with MS I was told I would have to do a clean install. When I had the commad prompt open I noticed that it said F:/.... My windows should be on C:/??? What had happened is that for some reason Ghost sets the drive letter to something other than C: A bit of Google and I discovered the solution. The Drive letter must match what it was previously or Windows thinks you are trying to install on more than one PC.

This is how you fix it:

1. Boot into Safe Mode
2. Ctrl+Alt+Del
3. Start Task Manager
4. New task> cmd
5. Type in "regedit"

Then follow steps 9-16 of this article from Microsoft

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows

1. Locate the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
2. Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
3. Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.
   
   Note You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
4. Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:".
   
   This frees up drive letter C.
5. Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
6. Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.
7. Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
8. Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".
9. Restart computer.

After I restrted I had everything back and functional as it was with my most recent backup.

This is a last dich effort. According to the tech I was on the phone forever with it does not always work and could make things worse. So I would only use it if you are about to do a clean install and loose everything anyway. Hope this helps someone.

KiwiME said:

[FWIW, this is really a fix for an image restoring mistake, not really a generic fix for every instance of the "This copy of Windows is not genuine" message.

Thanks for posting this solution, bxmedic! I'll flag the thread to be marked 'Solved'.

Cheers,

Walker
Windows Outreach Team