Hello,
I'm new on here. I run a W10 machine so I've been frequenting TenForums for a good while where I've had some great help. However I do have a situation which involves W7 and I'm wondering if anyone could possibly help...
Going through a large collection of old discs a few weeks ago I came across a Windows 7 disc – with the key. Whilst this was not an original MS disc I assumed someone had (legitimately?) copied it just in case their original MS disc got lost or damaged. I’ve no recollection of where it came from. At a previous place of work all staff members were entitled to a copy of the current MS OS for use on their office/lab pc's. I seem to remember they were also allowed a second copy for installing on a home machine (possibly for a nominal sum) as lots of staff members worked at home, writing reports etc etc. I’d sort of assumed that this is where the W7 disc originated from and never given it any more thought. I recently went on one of the MS sites to try and find out more about the OS/key and got the following information:
W7 Home Premium SP1 COEM GGK which doesn’t mean much to me…
Now my daughter has an old HP laptop with Vista installed and so I installed the W7 on the laptop merely as an exercise really to see if it would run. I duly pasted the key when asked and the software activated without any problems.
Seeing that updating the laptop had gone so well I thought I'd try it with an old Dell Dimension running XP which I have here which is hardly ever used – I just can’t get myself to bin it. I created a dual boot, keeping the old XP and installed W7 on the second partition and everything appeared to go well. However when I pasted the key to activate W7 it was refused with the error – 0xC004C008 – ‘The product Key you typed cannot be used to activate Windows on this computer’. I re-installed W7 a second time but the end result is the same – it won’t validate. Is this because it's was previously validated when I installed it on the laptop? I appreciate that it should not be possible to run multiple copies of the software but I seem to remember that this 'was' possible with the software we got at work, though presumably it should only have been used on two machines.
Now whether I can keep W7 on the old Dell or not is pretty irrelevant – it would be nice if I could – but I’m curious as to why it installed and activated on the laptop without any problems but refused to activate on the Dell. Incidentally W7 appears to run perfectly on the Dell, lots of updates were downloaded and installed, including drivers. I have an ‘elderly’ monitor with a square screen so I needed to play around with the screen res but other than that the Dell is happy with W7, a bit slow maybe…
As an aside. On the screen where I validate the software it gives a Product ID. Now I assumed this referred to the actual software but it’s different on the Dell to the laptop, and when I re-installed it’s different again. A simple reason I’m sure but it just goes to confirm that my computer knowledge is pretty basic!
I'm new on here. I run a W10 machine so I've been frequenting TenForums for a good while where I've had some great help. However I do have a situation which involves W7 and I'm wondering if anyone could possibly help...
Going through a large collection of old discs a few weeks ago I came across a Windows 7 disc – with the key. Whilst this was not an original MS disc I assumed someone had (legitimately?) copied it just in case their original MS disc got lost or damaged. I’ve no recollection of where it came from. At a previous place of work all staff members were entitled to a copy of the current MS OS for use on their office/lab pc's. I seem to remember they were also allowed a second copy for installing on a home machine (possibly for a nominal sum) as lots of staff members worked at home, writing reports etc etc. I’d sort of assumed that this is where the W7 disc originated from and never given it any more thought. I recently went on one of the MS sites to try and find out more about the OS/key and got the following information:
W7 Home Premium SP1 COEM GGK which doesn’t mean much to me…
Now my daughter has an old HP laptop with Vista installed and so I installed the W7 on the laptop merely as an exercise really to see if it would run. I duly pasted the key when asked and the software activated without any problems.
Seeing that updating the laptop had gone so well I thought I'd try it with an old Dell Dimension running XP which I have here which is hardly ever used – I just can’t get myself to bin it. I created a dual boot, keeping the old XP and installed W7 on the second partition and everything appeared to go well. However when I pasted the key to activate W7 it was refused with the error – 0xC004C008 – ‘The product Key you typed cannot be used to activate Windows on this computer’. I re-installed W7 a second time but the end result is the same – it won’t validate. Is this because it's was previously validated when I installed it on the laptop? I appreciate that it should not be possible to run multiple copies of the software but I seem to remember that this 'was' possible with the software we got at work, though presumably it should only have been used on two machines.
Now whether I can keep W7 on the old Dell or not is pretty irrelevant – it would be nice if I could – but I’m curious as to why it installed and activated on the laptop without any problems but refused to activate on the Dell. Incidentally W7 appears to run perfectly on the Dell, lots of updates were downloaded and installed, including drivers. I have an ‘elderly’ monitor with a square screen so I needed to play around with the screen res but other than that the Dell is happy with W7, a bit slow maybe…
As an aside. On the screen where I validate the software it gives a Product ID. Now I assumed this referred to the actual software but it’s different on the Dell to the laptop, and when I re-installed it’s different again. A simple reason I’m sure but it just goes to confirm that my computer knowledge is pretty basic!
My Computer
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- DELL Optiplex 5050
- OS
- Windows 10 1909 64 bit
