Windows 7 product activation errors

[Bateluer]

See if the AT-OS forum can give me some pointers with this. Some background is in order.

Back in April, my primary OS drive died. I RMA'd it to Seagate, 1 week to ship, 1 week for them to process, 1 week for them to ship a replacement drive. Which they wanted a signature for, so I had to wait another couple of days before I could get to the UPS Distro center to sign for it.

I installed the Certified Repaired drive from Seagate, installed Windows 7 Pro x64 using my legal CD key acquired back in October 2009 when they had that student sale through Digital River. It installed fine, activated, and everything was fine. I fully updated Windows 7 and installed my Steam library, only to have the hard drive begin experiencing exponential bad sectors according to Seagate's SeaTools application. That drive it sitting in a box to go back to Seagate after the weekend. I posted a thread in General Hardware about the possibility of just doing a full rebuild, but after much consideration of my current finances, I decided to just spent the money on a new hard drive.

My new Western Digital Caviar Black drive arrived yesterday and I installed it today. Booted from my Win7 DVD, partitioned the 500GB drive the way I wanted and began installing the OS. It got to the point in the install where it asked for my key, which I entered. And it told me it was invalid, I verified that I entered it correctly and attempted again, and it said it was invalid again. I left it blank it clicked next so that I could get the OS up. Now, when I attempt to activate it, it reports "Windows 7 activation error: 0xC004F061, key is for upgrade version" and drops me back to the Computer window.

I have always selected Advanced/Clean install whenever re-installing Windows 7, which I've done multiple times since October 2009. This time was no different.

There are two hardware changes, I moved 4GB of the originally installed 8GB to my backup machine to make it more tolerable to use, and I replaced the Microsoft USB keyboard with a wireless Logitech keyboard. I have not reinstalled all the RAM yet.

Anyone know how I can resolve this without paying Microsoft for another legal key? I'd install Mint, but this is my primary gaming computer. And its been basically been turned off for the past month.

 

[ViRGE]

Have you tried calling MS?

 

[Bateluer]

Have you tried calling MS?

Various automated systems. Every time I try get to a person, I either get a message telling me their support offices are closed or looping elevator music.

 

[ViRGE]

Various automated systems. Every time I try get to a person, I either get a message telling me their support offices are closed or looping elevator music.

Humm, weird. It's a 24 hour line; there should always be someone to take your call.:|

Ultimately if you bought a full version of Win7, it should install, even if it means calling MS to activate it.

 

[Noid]

Yes, you must call MS for new 'activation' code.

Changing hardware on an existing OS will still force a call to MS for ' re-authentication '

 

[Bateluer]

Yes, you must call MS for new 'activation' code.

Changing hardware on an existing OS will still force a call to MS for ' re-authentication '

I've been through that route before, but its only giving me the option to activate online, where it kicks out the error above. I can put the other 4GB of RAM back in, I only took it out for the backup machine to be a little more tolerable. It normally only has 2GB of RAM.

Edit - Still get the same error with the original 8GB back in. Going to have to call them on Tuesday. Good job Microsoft.

 

[Bateluer]

After speaking to Sanjay at Microsoft Tech Support this morning, my Windows 7 is now activated. Unfortunately, he didn't have any idea why it started this behavior now, and simply advised me to use the upgrade option. From within an existing OS. I inquired if I was going to have to contact support again when I do a rebuild here in a few months, and he just re-iterated the previous line.

I'd prefer not to have to give MS another chunk of change to simply avoid the hassle.