Windows 7 Windows Activation Technologies popup out of nowhere

[metroid]

Have had same computer with Windows 7 Home Premium for many years. Never had a problem with Windows saying it isn't genuine. A few years ago I cloned the HD to a newer drive. No problems. About 2 months ago I cloned the HD to a larger drive and am now using that without problems as my new HD. Until now. I have no idea why but I now get a Windows Activation Technologies popup - I don't know if it's related to cloning the HD.

I also have turned off Windows updates and used GWX tool to turn off the windows 10 nagware. Again, may be related.

The unfortunate thing is, I don't have any of the original Windows info, key, sn, or any kind of disks to run off of that I know of (my pc came custom built from HP years ago and I don't know where any of that info is)

Just ran the MGA diag exe and generated a report (attached) but don't know how to interpret it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

tool-report.txt

 

[ussnorway]

my Acronis bootable media disc

I tried doing the install with 'upgrade' option checked

what I think has happened is you used Acronis to enable boot area recovery... this adds a partition that was not there when the windows recovery was set up and can cause it to fail but a Microsoft tech should have picked up on that so did you tell her about Acronis being installed before she tried the recovery?

ime recovery drives from Windows are not much good once you have changed partitions and I would remove the hdd | replace with a new blank one and install (not upgrade) the Windows fresh.

 

[metroid]

what I think has happened is you used Acronis to enable boot area recovery... this adds a partition that was not there when the windows recovery was set up and can cause it to fail but a Microsoft tech should have picked up on that so did you tell her about Acronis being installed before she tried the recovery?

ime recovery drives from Windows are not much good once you have changed partitions and I would remove the hdd | replace with a new blank one and install (not upgrade) the Windows fresh.

Thanks for your input / help. I will look into this and your suggestions.

Hmm I don't remember using Acronis to enable boot area recovery (I only created a bootable disk when I first got Acronis). It was a long time ago though.

I think the 'unable to configure for this hardware' thing might be related to the HD setup (RAID vs something else) as my pc came prebuild and I think it was RAID but I don't think Win7 by default can install with that setup. Not sure though and using cmd line to change it seems sketchy

 

[metroid]

The issue cannot be fixed, and after thinking about it, I've decided to order a new (better) computer and after setting it up will begin porting over all of my files, applications, etc. Then when everything is on the new PC and I know it's working and I have everything, I will wipe the old computer's drive and install windows on it and have a 2nd computer. That leads me to a new question which I will post as a new thread in another part of the forum

 

[ussnorway]

thanks for the heads up metroid... hope it works out for you with the new system mate.