Activation problem!

iSamage · 27 Apr 2011

Hey,

Having a spot of bother activating my copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (x86)

After rebooting my entire laptop and installing a fresh copy (due to a nasty virus) I had tried to activate Windows using my Product Key, but it gave me an error during installation. So, I carried on without it. Once up and running, I tried again, and it gave me an error saying something alone the lines of....

"This key is not valid for custom installations, only for upgrades."

Is there anything I can do to get past this annoying thing?? I would ask microsoft, but my PID wont work in the support login thing and I'm NOT paying an extortionate amount of money just to get microsoft to listen.

Any help? Thanks!

Devux · 27 Apr 2011

Have you tried to activate over the phone with Microsoft? To my knowledge there is no charge for this, might be worth a shot if the internet activation isn't working. Just have to explain to them that you had to reformat your drive.

Mark Phelps · 27 Apr 2011

The message is correct. But, if you do a Repair Install, which is essentially reinstalling Win7 on top of your current installation, that will fix the problem -- just don't enter a product key during the reinstall, and don't activate online, either. Once you've rebooted and confirmed that your setup is OK, you can then enter your product key -- and it will work!

I know ... I've done this on two PCs now, both of which needed clean reinstallations, and both of which used Upgrade versions.

SIW2 · 27 Apr 2011

Don't even need to do that, just merge this , reboot and you're done

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE]
"MediaBootInstall"=dword:00000000

iSamage · 28 Apr 2011

Thanks for that :) Will try them!

SIW2 · 28 Apr 2011

You will probably need to enter the product key again, usually you would have done the reg merge before entering the key.

Any probs, type slmgr -rearm at administrator command prompt before entering key again.

iSamage · 28 Apr 2011

Sorry to be a bother, how do I do this merge thing?? I've found the registry entry but don't know exactly what I need to do

SIW2 · 28 Apr 2011

Merge the above .reg file which will do it for you.

Simply copy and paste the code above into notepad and save it as something.reg

Then dble click on something.reg and ok the warning.

To save you the bother, the .reg file is in this .zip

MBIZERO.zip