Windows not genuine after cloning

[MajorFoley]

Ok thought everything was going well, finally got my Samsung in and now its saying my windows is no longer genuine, activate today. Im pretty sure it was Genuine before so what forced it to change and what do i do about it?

[DisconnectedYT]

1 minute ago, MajorFoley said:

Ok thought everything was going well, finally got my Samsung in and now its saying my windows is no longer genuine, activate today. Im pretty sure it was Genuine before so what forced it to change and what do i do about it?

Well you cloned it so obviously its not genuine

[AresKrieger]

I assume the motherboard and other components stayed the same, so which windows was it?

 

Did you have your product key, if not you could complain to microsoft assuming it's windows 10 (don't know if they'll help with the others)

[theanimun]

if it was indeed genuine, all you have to do is reactivate it with the original product key

[MajorFoley]

Just now, AresKrieger said:

I assume the motherboard and other components stayed the same, so which windows was it?

 

Did you have your product key, if not you could complain to microsoft assuming it's windows 10 (don't know if they'll help with the others)

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and it says build 7601. When i check the key in system settings it seems to have OEM in it. Nothing has changed except the SSD.

[MajorFoley]

2 minutes ago, theanimun said:

if it was indeed genuine, all you have to do is reactivate it with the original product key

Just went this product type key is invalid. Which i don't really understand since it worked for the other SSD

[theanimun]

1 minute ago, MajorFoley said:

Just went this product type key is invalid. Which i don't really understand since it worked for the other SSD

Sounds like you might need to call Microsoft and have them reactivate it for you

[MajorFoley]

Just now, theanimun said:

Sounds like you might need to call Microsoft and have them reactivate it for you

They have a dedicated number for that or do i just ring their normal line?

[AresKrieger]

1 minute ago, DisconnectedYT said:

Well you cloned it so obviously its not genuine

You can usually clone drives without issue so long as the motherboard remains the same 

 

1 minute ago, MajorFoley said:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and it says build 7601. When i check the key in system settings it seems to have OEM in it. Nothing has changed except the SSD.

Hmm if it's an OEM key your kinda boned since you really can't do much with that, you could try getting microsoft to give you a working key but it's not certain they'll oblige for windows 7

 

As for how to contact them I believe you can do that through their support site

 

[theanimun]

I'm gonna assume its their normal customer support number

[DisconnectedYT]

5 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

You can usually clone drives without issue so long as the motherboard remains the same 

I know... when you clone 90% if the time you need to re-do the key and i have done this to my drives as one of them died so i had to move it onto my new Samsug 830 Pro or Evo?

[MajorFoley]

2 minutes ago, DisconnectedYT said:

I know... when you clone 90% if the time you need to re-do the key and i have done this to my drives as one of them died so i had to move it onto my new Samsug 830 Pro or Evo?

850 evo 250gb.

Actually this brings up a small point. On my 120gb intel ssd before the cloning, I did try windows 10 before going back to windows 7 using a backed up image, does that mean with the new SSD I couldn't go back to windows 10 without paying? Or is that data stored on the motherboard/ CPU ( I remember it saying this computer is digitally endorsed or something?

[theanimun]

1 minute ago, MajorFoley said:

850 evo 250gb.

Actually this brings up a small point. On my 120gb intel ssd before the cloning, I did try windows 10 before going back to windows 7 using a backed up image, does that mean with the new SSD I couldn't go back to windows 10 without paying? Or is that data stored on the motherboard/ CPU ( I remember it saying this computer is digitally endorsed or something?

you wouldn't be able to go back to win10 either way, the promotion ended 20 days ago, that being said you might be able to get it to goto the Preview build considering you have had Win10 before

[MajorFoley]

2 minutes ago, theanimun said:

you wouldn't be able to go back to win10 either way, the promotion ended 20 days ago, that being said you might be able to get it to goto the Preview build considering you have had Win10 before

Well supposedly they said after it was digitally endorsed you could go back as long as you had the iso or something and redid the activation. But anyways first problem at hand if Microsoft aren't likely to help me on this, I don't really want to deactivate my original SSD in case something goes wrong with this one. Any place to buy a cheap legit ultimate version key? Rather not use an activator if possible

 

EDIT: Was looking here

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/windows-7-is-not-genuine-after-cloning-to-ssd/125aff80-c01b-4881-b772-6caab5fbd887?page=2

Which told me to go here

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/2008385

But that seems something for servers?

[theanimun]

18 minutes ago, MajorFoley said:

Well supposedly they said after it was digitally endorsed you could go back as long as you had the iso or something and redid the activation. But anyways first problem at hand if Microsoft aren't likely to help me on this, I don't really want to deactivate my original SSD in case something goes wrong with this one. Any place to buy a cheap legit ultimate version key? Rather not use an activator if possible

 

EDIT: Was looking here

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/windows-7-is-not-genuine-after-cloning-to-ssd/125aff80-c01b-4881-b772-6caab5fbd887?page=2

Which told me to go here

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/2008385

But that seems something for servers?

Its for yours as well, that being said, do make backups of registry keys before making edits

Quote

Properties

Article ID: 2008385 - Last Review: 06/21/2014 14:06:00 - Revision: 13.0

Applies to

Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation, Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-Based Systems

Keywords:

• kbsmbportal KB2008385

notice the bold bit

[MajorFoley]

1 hour ago, theanimun said:

Its for yours as well, that being said, do make backups of registry keys before making edits

notice the bold bit

Hm... Well ill give it a shot later, i mean SSD's shouldnt be that much of a big change in hardware for this to happen can they? I thought it was CPU and Motherboard that were the biggest offenders there for this kind of thing.

[dalekphalm]

16 hours ago, MajorFoley said:

Hm... Well ill give it a shot later, i mean SSD's shouldnt be that much of a big change in hardware for this to happen can they? I thought it was CPU and Motherboard that were the biggest offenders there for this kind of thing.

You have Windows 7 Ultimate Edition? Where did you get it from? Are you 100% sure the original install was genuine?

[theanimun]

5 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

You have Windows 7 Ultimate Edition? Where did you get it from? Are you 100% sure the original install was genuine?

if it wasn't genuine then youll notice a program in the Program and Feature that looks suspicious, but is there to make your OS Genuine, and I'm not gonna list those off because I'm more than certain its something that would need to be googled on the OP's own time

[MajorFoley]

43 minutes ago, theanimun said:

if it wasn't genuine then youll notice a program in the Program and Feature that looks suspicious, but is there to make your OS Genuine, and I'm not gonna list those off because I'm more than certain its something that would need to be googled on the OP's own time

Last i checked im pretty sure it was genuine, and if by program you mean a activator then no im damn sure im not using one of those. Im trying again later today with an image instead of a clone and see where we go from there.

[MajorFoley]

OK so update time, might be a little early to celebrate but it seems using an image let it keep its genuine status! i don't get it why cloning would remove it though? Isn't imaging and cloning leading up to the same end point? I mean imaging does have the advantage of adding new data as it comes by

[dalekphalm]

9 hours ago, MajorFoley said:

OK so update time, might be a little early to celebrate but it seems using an image let it keep its genuine status! i don't get it why cloning would remove it though? Isn't imaging and cloning leading up to the same end point? I mean imaging does have the advantage of adding new data as it comes by

You can think of a Clone as a temporary Image. Rather than writing the original disk contents to an image file, it's dumping them straight onto a disk. From a practical standpoint, the results of cloning a disk, and saving the same disk to image then imaging the new disk, should be identical.

 

But it likely all comes down to the original OS, and whether it was TRULY Genuine. Cracked Windows will generally say that they are genuine, if cracked properly, but are obviously not actually genuine.

 

I suspect that your Windows copy is cracked, since you have Windows 7 Ultimate, which hardly anyone ever got legally, since it's a waste of money for a consumer over the Pro and Home Premium versions. I of course could be wrong, but you never did say how you got Win 7 Ult.

[MajorFoley]

On 8/24/2016 at 2:07 AM, dalekphalm said:

But it likely all comes down to the original OS, and whether it was TRULY Genuine. Cracked Windows will generally say that they are genuine, if cracked properly, but are obviously not actually genuine.

 

I suspect that your Windows copy is cracked, since you have Windows 7 Ultimate, which hardly anyone ever got legally, since it's a waste of money for a consumer over the Pro and Home Premium versions. I of course could be wrong, but you never did say how you got Win 7 Ult.

I didn't? Pretty sure i did? Well anyway I got it off a friend so i didn't really pay for it. Which means you guys are probably right it could have been somewhere he got it from and god knows where that could have been. But if that is the case i did build this PC and installed it with said key and said it was genuine so i dunno what to make of that.

[dalekphalm]

5 hours ago, MajorFoley said:

I didn't? Pretty sure i did? Well anyway I got it off a friend so i didn't really pay for it. Which means you guys are probably right it could have been somewhere he got it from and god knows where that could have been. But if that is the case i did build this PC and installed it with said key and said it was genuine so i dunno what to make of that.

You in fact did not say where you got the key until just now. If you got the key from your friend, he likely got it off of Reddit Software swap or G2A/Kinguin/equivalent.

 

Simply because nobody goes out and buys Windows 7 Ultimate at retail price.

 

Anyway, that's neither here nor there

[MajorFoley]

42 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

You in fact did not say where you got the key until just now. If you got the key from your friend, he likely got it off of Reddit Software swap or G2A/Kinguin/equivalent.

 

Simply because nobody goes out and buys Windows 7 Ultimate at retail price.

 

Anyway, that's neither here nor there

Yeah well if i have to buy win 10 ill buy it, but hopefully i shouldn't but again that would depend if the image would keep the digital endorsement after i did it on the old SSD. We'll see.