Explorer is showing an extra HD that I don't have

[Northern Lawn]

I just reformated and was clearing space on my other hard drives so I can make an image. I was also doing all the updates and getting all my settings and software installed.

I also plugged in my kindle so it could load it's software, I don't think I used the "Eject" thing to take it off...

Anyway, I can't see what's on this new HD that doesn't exist, it just says it's empty.

It's HD G: I'm not sure why some say Local Disk and some say New Volume. I have 4 One Terabyte HDs, I install the OS on C: and I have no partitions.

 

[postmortemIA]

windoiws 7 likes to make hidden 100MB partition during installation, looks like it.

 

[Northern Lawn]

windoiws 7 likes to make hidden 100MB partition during installation, looks like it.

I know what you're talking about, when I reformat, I deleted it then create it and format it for some reason. I wonder If I did something wrong this time. I've never saw it as a separate drive before.

 

[denis280]

are you sure you dint forget to delete the old partition??

 

[Northern Lawn]

are you sure you dint forget to delete the old partition??

I think that's what I must have did, damn it's such pain reformatting when you bought Win7 the day it came out...dozens of restarts, hundreds of updates, not to mention all the applications and settings I do.

I wanted to make an image this time... what a time to screw up. two weeks ago I was getting blue screen after blue screen so I finally reformatted. Everything was fine but then I tried to download a pdf from what appeared to be amazon.com. It said it had to connect to amazon to complete the download for acrobat reader and boom, i got botted.

I've never been botted like that, so obvious.. but this is why I'm reformatting again. 2nd time in two weeks, that's why I wanted an image to make it less painful.

I don't think I'd be able to make an image of my c: drive now that would be useful. *%^##*@!

 

[denis280]

did you buy the cd from a store or from some guy.

 

[Northern Lawn]

did you buy the cd from a store or from some guy.

I Paid like $350 for Windows7 Ultimate FROM A STORE. It was the first OS I actually bought since I bought a computer with windows 95 on it.

 

[denis280]

well its a mess.you will have to format again.and make sure you delete all patition.then creat a new one.(make sure you type the cd key properly)

 

[Northern Lawn]

.(make sure you type the cd key properly)

Is that what you were talking about? Yeah I type it in but it's not accepted anymore, I have to the phone option. One time I had to talk to someone in India who gave me the number.

I guess Micro Soft get suspicious if you reformat your computer more than a couple times.

When this problem happened, I had just reformatted and hadn't even validated yet, so when the bot put my date to 2072 my 30 day Windows licence was over... way over.

 

[denis280]

What! they don't accept the key.the key is yours to keep.and when you install windows make sure to put in the right date. and time zone.(I don't understand for the Key.no mater how many time you format.the key is always good)

 

[Smoove910]

What! they don't accept the key.the key is yours to keep.and when you install windows make sure to put in the right date. and time zone.(I don't understand for the Key.no mater how many time you format.the key is always good)

Not sure if that's entirely true. I've had a Windows 7 Ultimate disc for a while that I've used to do several system loads. Recently it has been coming back saying that I've used up all the uses on it, which basically means I need a new key. I believe this is tied to the activation of the OS since that's the only way I can think of they can know how many times your key has been used and on how many different machines. OP might be able to load and activate it, but they might also have reached the max #'s that key can be used. Food for thought!

 

[denis280]

Not sure if that's entirely true. I've had a Windows 7 Ultimate disc for a while that I've used to do several system loads. Recently it has been coming back saying that I've used up all the uses on it, which basically means I need a new key. I believe this is tied to the activation of the OS since that's the only way I can think of they can know how many times your key has been used and on how many different machines. OP might be able to load and activate it, but they might also have reached the max #'s that key can be used. Food for thought!

😱What the %?#$ they don't mess with peoples anought.

 

[Northern Lawn]

Yeah. I use my speaker phone, the automated voice asks for a code on my screen, like 20 digits. Then the voice repeats it all one at a time very slowly. Asks if its correct, (it has voice recognition) I answer yes.

I'm actually impressed with microsofts voice recognition anyway, the voice tells me the new code, asks me to press next etc. DONE.

If you had to do all this while holding a phone to your ear, that would be a real pain.

 

[Steltek]

If you activate it so many times within a specific period of time (though nobody outside of Microsoft seems to know or be willing to provide the specific limits), the online activation won't work anymore. However, for a retail copy, you can always call them and use the automated system. If the automated system ever refuses to work, talk to a person and they'll almost always be very helpful about getting the activation processed. The only exception is that if you go absolutely nuts with reactivating where it looks like you might be using it on multiple machines, they have been known to refuse to reactivate even a retail copy.

If you find yourself installing and reformatting very frequently (like in virtual machines or more often than every 90 days), it is usually better to just not activate and use the rearm process between wipes and reinstalls. If you are reinstalling on the same hardware, you can use software to back up and restore the Windows activation files as well.