Activation Situation

[Deetech]

I had a client call today with a activation problem on one of the computers that I had done a nuke and pave on recently. I did the fresh install on a dell with windows 7 home premium and thought everything was good to go. I use Ultra Virus killer to do a system info of the product key and entered that number. I do not remember if it was activated or not, but today they called me and said they were not activated and had non genuine software in their computer. I assured them everything was genuine and said I would come right over. When I got there I checked the product key I had and entered it again, no activation. I then looked at COA and it was a different, so I entered that and it activated no problems with genuine validation. I was wondering if anyone else has ever seen this, and wondering why I pulled out the wrong key?

 

[gadgetfixup]

You probably pulled the SLP key which is different than the COA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Locked_Pre-installation

On reloads always check authentication to prevent such embarrassing calls. Even once you resolve the matter the client will have in the back of their minds you did something shady once and now maybe twice. Confidence is hard to restore.

 

[Kitten Kong]

^^^^this.

On reloads, if the recovery partition is hosed, etc, always use the coa from the case.

Only in windows 8, can you pull the correct code from the bios, and use that for activation.

 

[NJW]

I did the fresh install on a dell with windows 7 home premium ...

Retail edition? You get a 30-day grace period (extendible twice, for two more 30-day periods), which is why it all worked when you returned the machine.

 

[Deetech]

I have always used the COA until I got UVK which I thought was great to extract the key, but I guess not. I did not know that the SLP key was one that was getting extracted. I will have to watch this in the future.

 

[Markverhyden]

I have always used the COA until I got UVK which I thought was great to extract the key, but I guess not. I did not know that the SLP key was one that was getting extracted. I will have to watch this in the future.

All OEM's will have the SLP key pulled from any app that retrieves the software/OS product keys in W7 and earlier. I will always use the COA key on a re-install unless it's rubbed off/missing. In those situations I'll give the SLP key a try. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I think it depends on who the OEM is.