[Son_of_Thunder]

So not exactly sure what's going on, but in the last two days I've had two of my laptops come up and tell me they're not genuine. A few years ago that wouldn't have meant anything, but currently all of my computers have genuine licenses on them. This happened with both a Vista home prem. sp2 32bit on my fiance's unit and on my lenovo which is running win 7 ult. 64bit. Both of them say "This copy of windows is not genuine" and pop up the annoyances to purchase a genuine license. They both do the 2 hour shut off thing and have disabled visual effects and backgrounds.

On my lenovo I called windows and complained and they said that obviously I had either stolen my key or had let someone else use it. Neither of these are the case and I offered to show them proof that I had purchased the 7 ultimate and they said that wouldn't help. I eventually got pissed and used my recovery partition (ew) to go back to vista premium.

Later that night my fiance complained that her background had gone away and to my dismay her's was now displaying the same errors. With hers I just punched her key in again and it activated and passed genuine advantage. Hoping that this will work for me I'm currently getting ready to re-install 7 on my laptop.

Has anyone else ever dealt with these issues? I'm not currently running any non-legit Microsoft programs on either of these units. I have legal copies of both OS's and a 3 user license of office on both. Using Kaspersky Internet Security on both as well.

I still have two computers running Win 7 that haven't had this issue that are set up the same way, hopefully those won't take a dive too.

[Judas]

personally i've only seen this after someone brought in a real nasty infected machine.. and at removing almost all the crap ..... windows had a fit and said it wasn't genuine..

all i had to do was hit activate as it still had the cd-key in it.. and it reactivated without a hitch...

However i am wondering if some of the virus makers are now able to rip the inputed cd-key out and send it to themselves via virus... i mean really is that hard to conceive considering we've had tools for quite some time to check your own cd-key on a machine for windows xp and so forth?

[IvanV]

Have you tried this: http://www.microsoft.com/GENUINE/

Funny thing is I got a similar message at log on a few days ago after cleaning up the PC (I guess that it happened because I'd rearranged the USB devices so Win7 redetected them and then threw the message at the next boot-up), but I just ignored it and fortunately I haven't seen it since.

[Son_of_Thunder]

Even after a full re-install it still says that my key is invalid. I am now using less-than-legal ways of keeping this system activated because, heck, I like windows 7 ultimate, and I paid for it >:X

My school offers Win 7 Pro for free through MSNDAA, I'll look into getting that for the future. Last time I trust Microsoft genuine though, next time I won't be paying them.

[Tyrsonswood]

I wonder if there is a new spyware that's stealing keys and using them?

[IvanV]

Hmm... You could try phone activation. My friend had similar problems with her Vista laptop some time ago, it wouldn't even activate with a key of mine which I wasn't using, until we finally decided to try phone activation.

[Takaharu]

I use phone activation all the time at work. We have like 5 serial numbers for more than 50 of the PCs; any that don't activate online I just ring up Microsoft, follow the automated process and when it prompts for how many PCs I have it installed on, I press 1. Job done.

[Son_of_Thunder]

Phone activation also didn't work. And doing the validation on their website said that mine was not genuine but my fiance's was. I also did it again after using my sub-legal methods and it now says that mine is genuine. All it takes is one wrong windows update though :/

[Son_of_Thunder]

Sorry for the double post. I've now had four more people tell me that their windows gave them this same error. It's now spanning into Windows XP as well.

[Tyrsonswood]

Interesting....... everybody access the same sites, on the same network, or all email friends, any other connection like that? Or is it more random.....

[mkk]

The Microsoft forum for activation issues has a lot of stories but usuaully there's a logical explanation. Microsoft Genuine Advantage Category

[BiGBrOwNPimpsta]

run a thorogh scanner like NOD32... activation errors can be annoying