Windows from China

You cannot be certain. Many of those run for a while (e.g. 6 months) and stop then. How much did you pay. An authentic OEM version costs $99. Newegg.com - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - Operating Systems

My purchase of W7 Ult. was a download so I don't have the proper copy, but my MS Office 2007 and all other MS original disks have a holographic sticker on the packaging and even the Office disks have a holographic image in the disk that to my mind would be very difficult to copy. Maybe someone with the original W7 Home Edition disk will pipe up with more details. To me it's not promising that your purchase shipped from China !

I would say make sure that your laptop is up to date with the latest updates and eventually Service Pack 1. Every once and a while if it is an illegal copy an update or Service Pack will break the fake activation, and then it'll tell you that it's not genuine.

If that is the case (hopefully not), then I would suggest getting all the documentation on your purchase that you can and explaining the situation kindly to Microsoft, they may help you out.

But that's worst case scenario. Hopefully you don't have to deal with that. :)

About 99% of windows 7 sold on Ebay are very good copies with MSDN ot Technet keys which means they are Illegal

i thought this was funny in the context: