I am an idiot maybe

Firstly about the money. Did you pay for the machine with a credit card? If so contact the card company and see if you can dispute the payment on the grounds that you were defrauded. There is a limit to how long after the purchase you can file a claim, a telephone call to the card company would clear this up, and they usually operate 24/7 so do it now. If it's not too long ago they can claw money back even without a forwarding address. After doing that, I think that your best bet is to go to a reputable dealer. And no, you will not lose all your data, it should be recoverable.

David

AddRAM said:

JennaMaire said:

Did a clean install, lost ALL my stuff but I wanted my PC back. Thanks to ALL of you that helped, attempted to help or even just replied !! Great site here and I will be staying around just to educate my illiterate PC-using self.

Thank you again ALL !!

How did you do an install ? Thought you didn`t have a disc ?

I called a friend who called a friend and he called me and I cried and he helped me. I did give him $25 and a bottle of Absolut. And when I buy my disk in 2 weeks I can activate it then.

DavidtheRhino said:

Firstly about the money. Did you pay for the machine with a credit card? If so contact the card company and see if you can dispute the payment on the grounds that you were defrauded. There is a limit to how long after the purchase you can file a claim, a telephone call to the card company would clear this up, and they usually operate 24/7 so do it now. If it's not too long ago they can claw money back even without a forwarding address. After doing that, I think that your best bet is to go to a reputable dealer. And no, you will not lose all your data, it should be recoverable.

David

The guy is GONE, I didn't save his name or anything but he is GONE. For myself I can say it was a lesson learned. I should not be so impetuous.

JennaMaire said:

I am 100% sure that it is a pirated version. I was told that Microsoft firebricks the PC when they find a pirated version so I am guessing that is what happened here. I have been doing all the updates since I bought it and had no problems before. As I said earlier I am a 1st time buyer, I thought I was getting a good PC with a genuine OS. I would guess that recovering my stuff and starting over with a genuine OS is my only option.

Probably too late now, but if you report this to Microsoft with details of where you were conned, they do sometimes compensate you with a genuine version of Windows.

http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/reporting/default.aspx