Activation help needed

[Marmaduck]

Hello everyone
My first post and I feel a bit stupid for asking for help straight away.
There doesn't seem to be a forum for newbies to pop into and say hi, so I hope no one minds.

My PC came with an oem version of Windows 7 home premium 4 months ago, (bought from a reputable internet vendor) but I never got to use it for more a few days because I was taken into hospital.
I get home a few days ago, turn the PC on and am greeted with an expired activation warning. I tried re entering the activation code several times but the same message came back 'this code cannot be used on this computer, please retype, buy another key...etc'

I noticed your forum mentions in several threads that activation problems can be sorted via an automated phone call to Microsoft but this is no good for me as I am deaf, on my own with no one to assist me with this.

I was thinking maybe my best bet would be to follow the MS link and buy another activation key code? Is this emailed to me? Would it 110% work - I don't want to waste more money and end up hving the same activation probelms.

Thank you so much for helping, really appreciate it

Marmaduck (God, what possessed me to choose that username!)

 

[Orbital Shark]

Hi Marmaduck, welcome to the forums

Does your computer have a restore option when booting (e.g. press F11 to run recovery program)? If so you may need to run the recovery program to restore it to factory setup. This will however cause loss to all data.

Another option is to run System Restore (press F8 during boot and select Recovery) and restore to the earliest possible date. This has worked in other cases so is well worth a try.

Hope it helps


OS

 

[Marmaduck]

Hi OS
Thanks for the welcome.
I will try those two options you mentioned. I'm not really worried about losing any data as the computer was only used for a few days.
Thank you

 

[gregrocker]

Read about rearming activation here, same for Win7: Vista: Activation and the SLMGR Command (options explained) | Microsoft Vista | Tech-Recipes

 

[Marmaduck]

Hi Guys
Bit of an update. A friend came by on the off chance and I asked if he could help. He phoned the activation helpline for me, typed in lots of numbers into the phone and was given sets back (by an answer machine). He said he was short of one set? (typed in 9 blocks of 6 numbers but only got 8 sets back).
I ran upstairs with the numbers to power up the PC, tried to find the 'activate your code' pop ups, accidentaly hit enter without typing anything in....and got a activation successfull popup. I haven't done anything yet? Is there something else wrong with my PC?

 

[Phone Man]

Hit Start button and right click on Computer and select Properties.
It should bring up the System window and at the bottom is the Windows Activation section. What does it say?

Jim

 

[Tews]

As long as you're activated, I wouldn't be too concerned...

 

[Marmaduck]

Hi Phone man, Tews
The description in the 'system' tab says 'windows is activated'
Not sure how it sorted itself out becaused I never used the code given by the automated phonecall.
Can't really explain what happened, maybe bacause I changed the time from US to UK hours? All is well now anyway & I'm sat here as a windows 7 newbie really, (from XP) the only experience I've had of W7 was a couple of days about 4 months ago, looking forward to getting stuck into it.

Cheers
Marmaduck

 

[Tews]

Im glad that you have it all sorted out.. now, a word of advice .... make an image of your system disk and save it to a separate drive/partition in case you run into unexpected problems in the future.. It's a lot easier to restore an image, than it is to reinstall your entire OS...

Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

 

[Marmaduck]

Hi Tews. Will definitely back up my system to a seperate partition. I've got something called Acronis True Image 2010 which I think will do just that.

 

[Tews]

I swear by Acronis .... Its on all of my machines ...

 

[jimbo45]

I swear by Acronis .... Its on all of my machines ...

Same here --it's NEVER let me down yet.

Incidentally make the Bootable media too since you might NOT have an OS to restart Acronis from if your system gets hosed -- or if you want to restore a CLEAN IMAGE after Virus checking.

You can create a BOOTABLE USB stick too -- much the quickest and easiest way to do this.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Marmaduck]

Thank you Jimbo, Tews too