I still haven't gotten the answer I'm looking for. Can I use one of the keys from the Family Pak to activate the currently installed W7 ?
OR am I going to have to lose all of my programs and re-install from the disk that comes with the new key? Since W7 is already running it would seem that ANY valid key would activate it.
Let's see if I have this straight:
You had a Win7 beta on a laptop, and you installed the release version over it. Did you get a windows.old folder? If so, your files are there. (Because you had to do a custom install, though, any installed programs are gone, even though the files remain in windows.old.)
What did you do on the Inspiron 530s? Another custom install?
I don't have a copy of the family pack, but what I've read about it suggests that it's basically a Home Premium upgrade. There's a single copy of the installation media. There's also one license key, which can be used to activate Win7 on 3 machines. (That's unlike the regular upgrade license, which activates only one machine.)
I'm not sure whether you can insert an Upgrade key in an existing installation. I'm fairly sure that Vista did not permit that, but Win7 is different. You may have to re-install. (An upgrade-in-place to the same version may be possible. It'll preserve your setup, but it can take much longerthan a clean install.)
Yes, Last Oct I downloaded Beta on my Vista laptop and installed it. It worked fine with all of my programs. Then a couple of months ago it said it would quit working unless I downloaded the new version. It said I could save everything to a usb drive which I did. I was going to wait for the final version and then re-install everything that was running fine on Beta. Anyway I used the laptops original disk and reinstalled the original operation system, Vista, with none of my programs thinking they were safe on my USB drive. When I finally got my W7 I installed it and tried to use easytransfer to get back all of my programs but nada! So now I have a barren laptop used for internet mostly.
To the present....I installed the same version of W7 on my Dell which had vista and all of my programs on it. None of that came over, so I spent hours and hours reinstalling PS and Genuine fractals Photokit etc along with all of the activation crap including Adobe telling me I had to buy a new copy of PS because I had activated it too many times. They finally activated it online and now all of my programs are back and running. NOW I try to activate W7 and it won't so I call support and get the answer that I can only activate once (laptop) My mistake, So I am told to spend $149 right then with my credit card for a new key. I hung up and went to the MS store and found there is a family pak for $179 so I bought that. NOW Today i got a message that "You must activate today" I'm worried because for one thing Adobe is NOT going to reactivate me again and it's not cheap. SO when the family pak comes in Monday ( I opted for 2 day) my question is, Would I have run out of time to activate (It's only been 3 days) or can I use one of the 3 serial keys when the package arrives to simply go to activate with new key and enter it and be done with it? You can see if I have to reinstall w7 and all of my programs I will be in a disaster financially! The question is a simple yes or no....can I use one of the new keys to activate without reinstalling W7 !
I'm not entirely sure why you're still asking the question. We've shown you how to prolong the activation to give you more than enough time till your keys come in. As long as you have a valid key, you should have no problems. Assuming the keys you're getting are for the version of Windows you currently have installed.
To everyone, just got the "Family Pak" and opened it. It has one serial key inside so I opened "Activate windows" and being offline entered the key and after about 30 seconds of "Activating" it came up with a screen 'Activation successful" Now I'm back in business. Opened the old Vista drive and drug my documents into W7 48gigs and it worked!
Thanks all
Were you intending to keep running Win7 on both laptop and Dell? Because MS was telling you that you can only install it on one machine at a time, not just once period.
A retail license that isn't OEM can migrate to other computers as you wish, as long as it is on only one at a time. In the case of your family 3-pack, that license can be on 3 computers at the same time, and can also migrate as you please as long as it isn't on more than 3 computers.
You own 3 licenses (possibly four?) for life - they cannot steal them back from you.
Next time you want to do a reinstall or sort these issues out, post here exactly what you want to do and you will get a laundry list of what to expect. Doing hundreds of reinstalls gives us perspective.
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