Windows 7 Discussion about MS Genuine Advantage

fjgold

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Jan 11, 2009
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This is not an issue but an observation open for discussion.

Ever since installing Win 7 home in December of last year I have my computer boot interrupted at least every month by a dialog box "informing" me that I may not have a genuine copy of Win 7 and requesting my input to verify that I have a genuine copy of WIN 7, in essence re-activating it.

It happened again today.

So far there hasn't been a refusal to activate but being asked every month to verify my copy of Win 7 is annoying to say the least.
It was my impression that once a genuine copy of in 7 is activated it's activated for good unless a number of hardware changes are detected (no changes whatsoever).

This is a full
retail copy of Win 7 Home Premium obtained at full retail price of $199.99 from my local
Office Depot, no bargain bin stuff here.

Has anyone else experienced this?
How far does MS trust it's paying customers?
 
Solution
If the problem continues, try calling Microsoft.

If you continue to experience this problem, contact the Microsoft Product Activation Center by phone at 1-888-571-2048. It is a toll-free call. There is a way to bypass the robot activation and speak to an actual human, customer support representative, who may be able to issue you a new product key/activation by phone.

This will usually reset the complex hashes that are involved in your activation and causing the issue.

I would also recommend verifying all of your Windows system files have full integrity by launching the command prompt (Start -> Search -> cmd.exe) Right-click "Run as Administrator". Type: sfc /scannow

Just in case.
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Hi

It has to be some kind of glitch.
I've been running Windows 7 for more then a year between RC and Retail and I've never seen that.
I don't have a clue about how you would stop it though.

Mike
 
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I never got around to investigating a similar problem I had which did strike me as rather odd. I was dual booting XP and Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit. Because of some intensive testing I was doing at the time I was frequently creating and restoring from images of the XP boot drive using Acronis True Image. Here's the funny thing - every time I ran a restore of the XP drive image it caused the Windows 7 Ultimate install to report itself as possibly fake - then go on to pass the online WGA test! I suspect it's a glitch arising from the ongoing knife edge play being enacted out between MS and the pirates.

Interestingly, I've recently reinstalled from scratch and am dual booting XP 32 bit with Windows 7 64 bit running similar Acronis imaging and restoring but all the old WGA problem shave stopped.

I can't identify a specific cause but, in my case at least it seemed to be associated with something (file, registry entry or whatever) being restored to an earlier value or state.
 
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You know, now that you mention it I only see this behavior when I image and restore
both my XP and Win 7 partitions as well.

Every month I create new images of both my Win 7 and XP installs on my multi-boot setup (I also image my 4 linux installs, though not as often).
I use Clonezilla Live to create the images and I always perform restores before exiting
Clonezilla to ensure the images will work when\if needed.

Yesterday was my monthly image day and the glitch occurred after the second or third
boot of Win 7. As mentioned activation occurs without incident but I think this explains it.
I would like to know, just for giggles, why this occurs but I don't plan on losing sleep over it.

Interesting how piracy is affecting everyday life isn't it.
 
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Well that at least adds two bits more information to the puzzle - it seems almost certainly to be related to restoring the drive from a backup image - it also eliminates the specific backup software package used as I was using Acronis and you were using Clonezilla.
 
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I believe the message says "may not be a.... ?

It could be seen as a bug.
Your copy is genuine, as you have stated. Make sure it is activated once again.
Now go to this page and, on the left, click "validate windows"
Follow the simple instructions. The process takes 2 - 3 minutes.
You will not be troubled with the message again.

Genuine Microsoft Software
 
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If the problem continues, try calling Microsoft.

If you continue to experience this problem, contact the Microsoft Product Activation Center by phone at 1-888-571-2048. It is a toll-free call. There is a way to bypass the robot activation and speak to an actual human, customer support representative, who may be able to issue you a new product key/activation by phone.

This will usually reset the complex hashes that are involved in your activation and causing the issue.

I would also recommend verifying all of your Windows system files have full integrity by launching the command prompt (Start -> Search -> cmd.exe) Right-click "Run as Administrator". Type: sfc /scannow

Just in case.
 
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Solution
I've never heard of a 1 month product key for Win 7 besides my copy is a full retail copy.

Tried the suggestion by RAK and the online program reported that validation failed suggesting I try again later or uninstall the update it had me install and reinstall it and try again.

I then ran sfc \scannow as Mike suggested (I knew that it would find at least 2 files needing replacement) as expected it "repaired" my imageres.dll file that I had modified
to allow me to use my own startup sound and restored task scheduler, deliberately disabled by me.

Ran the validation program again still reporting that it failed.

Called the number Mike gave but it is only for XP and offers no way to talk to a real person.

Re-entered my product code and Windows reported a successful re-activation.

As long as it causes no problems I'm content with everything the way it is.

If it is a bug I hope it is fixed by SP1.
 
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I've had only _one_ case of this happening randonly. I've been using Windows 7 for over 1 year. Not everything about 7 is 100% perfect I guess
 
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Interesting, I reported in post #10 that the validation tool suggested by RAK had failed.
Just tried it again and it reported success. Go figure.

Sgtryan, it everyhing were perfect it would be a boring world.

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced that the issue is an artifact of my using
Clonezilla to image my Win 7 install.
It only seems to happen shortly after creating and restoring an image.
I've made it a habit to perform an immediate restore right after creating an image while still in Clonezilla.
This gives me the peace of mind that the image is good and that I can depend on it if\when needed.
 
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