Activation Key: Upgrading Only?

Had an XP/Pro machine; am upgrading to Win 7/Pro. Got the software from Amazon.com back when MS was having their pre-ship sale. At the same time allso got a Win 7/Home upgrade and applied it directly to my Netbook with no problems.

I wanted to clean my Boot sectors, and I did; however, when I try to activate I get code 0xC004F061 (ya gotta love those codes) .... "The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations."

Does this mean that I have to install XP/Pro again, and then install Windows 7/Pro over it?

Bummer !!

Richard, thanks for your help.

(1) I don't remember if I checked or left open "activate automaically, when on line"

(2) I used Control Panel > System > Change product key (at the bottom of the system panel) in my failed attempt to activate.

(3) I went to your first reference, and didn't find anything there.

(4) I called the MS Activation hot line and got someone who barely spoke English. He was no help, and sent me to someone who spoke US English. She advised me that I needed to reinstall XP/Pro, and then install Win 7/Pro over it. I "think" I got her to acknowledge that this was an administrative issue and not a technical issue; however, she couldn't help me.

So, is there any way I can avoid having to reinstall Windows XP/Pro?

When you did your reinstall, did you delete the System Reserved, as MS updates etc add ref info there.

Well, fatigue set in so I thought I'd take the easy way out. After all, I have my laptop with Win 7/Pro (64) installed on it with a second monitor, so I can "suffer" a little while longer without my main machine.

Since I had only installed Norton Internet Security 2010 on the desktop and really have not invested much time with it, I decided to just reinstalled XP/Pro as suggested by MS. And, for what it is worth, I WAS using the correct Win 7 activation code for my Win 7 pro upgrade.

Alas, XP was my undoing.

I now keep getting the following message: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA in white letters on a pretty blue screen (LOL). Says the problem seems to be caused by the following file: setupdd.sys.

Now I took care to "break" by RAID-1 array for drive "C" so the loader should have seen just a normal disk drive.

Any ideas? I know I'm way off topic on a Win 7 forum ...

A colleague advises that since the motherboard (eVGA 780i) is much newer the Windows XP, XP is unlikely to have the device drivers for the RAID controller on the motherboard. And those drivers are required even though I've "broken" the RAID (i.e., separated "C:" into to volumes).

So, I've found the CD-ROM with the drivers on it, and I'm off to find a computer with a floppy disk drive that I can copy the drivers to. Alas, XP is set-up assuming everyone has their device drivers on floppy disks. Sigh.

websquad said:

A colleague advises that since the motherboard (eVGA 780i) is much newer the Windows XP, XP is unlikely to have the device drivers for the RAID controller on the motherboard. And those drivers are required even though I've "broken" the RAID (i.e., separated "C:" into to volumes).

So, I've found the CD-ROM with the drivers on it, and I'm off to find a computer with a floppy disk drive that I can copy the drivers to. Alas, XP is set-up assuming everyone has their device drivers on floppy disks. Sigh.

This may be of help.

SATA Drivers - Load in Windows XP Setup on Dual Boot

I took the CD-ROM to a machine that had a floppy disk drive. The CD-ROM had an automated utility for setting up the floppy (apparently, all it did was unzip some drivers and load them in the root directory of the floppy). When I got back to the office, the XP/Pro installation procedure would not recognize the floppy disk. I even burned two of these to make sure. Nothing worked.

So, I tried to do an image restore from my Macrium Reflect image backup I made last night. Alas, the Linux program that is the heart of the restore program (on a bootable CD-ROM) would not recognize my USB 3.0 attached hard drive (which stores the backup image). I burned another CD-ROM, this time specifying the "compatibility mode" ... that didn't work either. (In retrospect, I could have copied the USB 3.0-based image file to a USB 2.0 hard drive, and it likely would have worked. I suspect the problem is that Windows XP does not recognize USB 3.0 as the software was originally distributed ... support was probably added with some later service packs).

I've heard said that an early sign of mental incapacity is when we try the same thing over and over and expect different results. Being in such a state, I again tried to boot from the XP/Pro CD-ROM and read the floppy with the device drivers -- and this time I met with success.

I'm now one happy idiot: XP is formatting my drive "C" ... except, it has labeled it drive "H:" I'm not sure what that's all about. After the XP install, I'll immediately install Windows 7 over it as an Upgrade.

WINDOWS 7 UPGRADE: As I recall, there are two options that pop up for the Windows 7 upgrade. I don't remember the exact wording, but can you refresh my memory? Which one should I use coming from XP?

Regarding Drive H: Can I re-designate that as drive "C"?