Windows 7 home premium(32-bit) reactivation help.

[LogicalDrm]

6 hours ago, grss1982 said:

Some friends of mine who worked for an outsourcing company that happens to be contracted by Microsoft.

 

It's been around for quite some time now: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/326246/how-to-replace-microsoft-software-or-hardware-and-order-service-packs

 

But the $40 replacement is only for North American customers and something only veteran tech support people that MS contracts knows of.

It says that discontinued products are excluded. Win7 would be discontinued from point where MS stopped selling it and asked for their retailers to not sell any.

[grss1982]

On 3/14/2019 at 5:05 PM, LoGiCalDrm said:

It says that discontinued products are excluded. Win7 would be discontinued from point where MS stopped selling it and asked for their retailers to not sell any.

Not exactly. Discontinued as described by Microsoft is when the product is officially not anymore supported i.e. Windows XP and Windows Vista or Office 2007.  IIRC support for Windows 7 will end early next year.

 

My contacts inform me that the replacement key process is still in place but at it's up to the MS technician to offer. You can't just ask for it when contacting.

[Alan G]

I bought a Win 7 product key about 16 months ago from PC Destination for about $30.  I wanted to do a new HTPC build that would run Windows Media Center for my cable card tuner.  I had no issues at all in activating it.  I've seen reports that this company might be getting gray market product keys which would be a concern for Windows 10 since their prices are so low.  Since Microsoft was not selling Windows 7 any longer this was one to the only ports in the storm.  I've not had any issues at all since activating (never expected to).