Okay, now I’m pissed. I ended up replacing my motherboard because the old one was slowly going belly up. No problem. I’m reinstalling and Windows seems to take my reg code just fine. Only I notice somethign at the bottom of the screen when I right-click on my computer that it says I need to activate Windows 7. I thought it did that during the installation, but no worries right? Sio I tell it to go ahead and it tells me the code is NO GOOD! I retype it in several times to no avail. Of course finding a phone number to talk to an actual person at Microsoft is next to impossible. No way am I buying a whole new copy of Windows 7. I’ll fucking go open source first! So has anyone else had this problem?
Was your original Win 7 copy an OEM copy? If so, that’s one of the rules of OEM copies I believe - they’re attached to that specific instance of hardware.
If you can actually get what you need out of Linux, there’s no particular reason not to go that route these days. As an OS most modern distributions are easy enough to use. They just don’t do a particularly good job of running Office or Games or any other windows software you might be partial to.
…it doesn’t take much for you to go off does it? Due to my OCD and reinstalling 5-10 times in 1 day, I’ve exceeded the activation limit many times and the automated phone system (the number is given right on the page where activation fails) gets me back up and running in <5 minutes. Don’t fucking spaz.
I did a mobo+cpu swap over the weekend which required me to re-register or whatever my copy of Win 7. Wouldn’t do it online so I had to call but it was done automatically with HAL reading back my new key. Didn’t have to speak to anyone.
Yeah, I did this and it worked. Thanks for the advice. Just the thought of having to shell out another couple of hundred dollars because I bought a new mobo had my blood boiling. Glad it was an easy fix. Thanks again!
I know many of us have been calling in our Windows OS keys in to Microsoft ever since the debut of Windows XP, but I have a feeling divorced is new to the build your own computer thing. I was confused the first time this happened to me way back when. The licensing error dialog box gave me a toll-free number to call to manually activate my Windows XP license.
Yeah, the only change from the many times I’ve done this before is that instead of trying to understand a Swede based in Ireland I’m now stuck with a retarded HAL reading a lot of numbers veeery slowly.
But it has always worked, without questions.
When authentication fails, it gives you a phone number right there on screen to call. Recommend trying again and paying attention.
You call the number, deliver your codes to the computer voice, which then will fail just like your internet authentication did. It will transfer you to a human, and you will read the codes again, and they’ll give you another set of codes and you’ll be done.
Takes maybe 5-10 minutes. I’ve had to do this many times due to the frequency I change hardware and rebuild computers. It’s never been a big deal. In fact I had to do it just a couple weeks ago with my mac.