Win 7 expired, validation required & possible Conficker contamination

Download avg or antivir on another computer, or the same one, but don't run them.

Boot into safe mode and install there. Run the antivirus, reboot and run it again.

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

How do you change sata ports?

Turn of your computer and take out the AC power cord.Open your computer case and locate your HDD, follow the skinny and flat cord to your motherboard. Now move the connector of that cable to another smaller port nearby.

You can also change which sata drive to boot from by either bringing up the boot device menu at post or set that as the default boot device in the bios without even opening the case up. I do that regularly when bouncing back and forth between 4 sata HDs and an ide drive.

Is that effective as a physical change?

It's easy once the OS part is already set. In order to make each drive bootable you first have to unplug any other sata if an OS is present there or any ide drive if installing on a sata to make it bootable. Later you simply change which hard drive will the default for any long term booting.

The boot device menu is used there for a one time session and falls back to the default boot drive once you restart. That comes in quite handy when first installing Windows rather then repeat trips into the bios once the system reboots the first time after all setup files are copied to the hard drive.

When the system restarts you immediately see the installation complete itself since it automatically boots from the hard drive you set as default. With the situation there of not being able to activate 7 being passed the grace period which build are you trying to run? 7000 likely.

Only the Ultimate edition in 7 can be activated to start with. If that was a leak of 7 it may not have been the 7000 but a previous build where the time limit has passed. With the RC stage being reached and the public beta available back in January 8/1 for 32bit the activation period may have been limited there by intent since it was made readily available for the public on a limited basis only to start with.

The maximum activations for the 7000 builds is only 5 total if you needed to reinstall or try it out on additional test machines. For seeing the Conficker removed the media in general has been doing a good job for whoever when consulting security experts? about it where by going directly to the antivirus companies and being able to log in there shows you are not infected. The download section should also see a special removal tool as well.