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windows not genuine after hard drive clone
A user's hard drive crashed on an Inspiron 560 (Late 2009) desktop with OEM windows 7 professional. I cloned the hard drive, in hopes of retaining user preferences, data, etc, but now windows is activated but not genuine. I've tried going through windows tech support, activating via phone, even using an entirely different windows 7 key, but I cannot make the copy of windows genuine.
Is there any possible of making this copy of windows active?
Is it possible to clone hard drives in these circumstances? In the future, is there a specific process I can follow with oem windows 7 licenses to ensure that the copy of windows remains genuine (say to upgrade a users hard drive or in the case of a hard drive crash like this?)
Is there any possible of making this copy of windows active?
Is it possible to clone hard drives in these circumstances? In the future, is there a specific process I can follow with oem windows 7 licenses to ensure that the copy of windows remains genuine (say to upgrade a users hard drive or in the case of a hard drive crash like this?)
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Since you cloned a crashed disk, you cloned the errors with it, and that is probably causing your issues.
I suggest you do a clean installation using the recovery DVD's your customer made after he got the PC (or order them from the manufacturer if he didn't make them), then just copy whatever data from the user's profile you can from the clone to the newly created profile.
I suggest you do a clean installation using the recovery DVD's your customer made after he got the PC (or order them from the manufacturer if he didn't make them), then just copy whatever data from the user's profile you can from the clone to the newly created profile.
Have you tried running this - http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/diag/
Then run this - http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/validate/DownloadValidationSupport.aspx?displaylang=en
Then run this - http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/validate/DownloadValidationSupport.aspx?displaylang=en
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28460566/windows-activation-question.html
It seems that all cloning software is not created equal. :) As mentioned in that thread, cloning with Casper retains the Windows activation. In the time since that thread, I have cloned many, many drives with Casper — and Windows (and all other software) has remained activated. Regards, Joe