can't re-activate windows 7

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Painterh52

New Member
Hi all. I recently did a repair install of windows 7 pro 64 bit on a ten year old homebuilt machine to clear up some corruption issues. Consequently, when I rebooted,
windows activation came up and I had saved my product key before to a notepad document. However when I tried to use the product key (to activate windows) I get a message which says I have tried to use a default product key and it wouldn't work for activation. I am a 66 year old retired man, and I have never pirated software, so it really bothers me to constantly see the message that windows is not genuine, aside from the fact that windows now works in reduced functionality mode. Does anyone have any ideas?
 
When you click "Activate" does it give you a choice of phoning Microsoft? That often can iron out this sort of problem.
 
Where did you get the product key from? Did you buy your PC with Windows 7 pre-installed? PCs that came with Windows 7 all (pretty much without exception) have a sticker on them somewhere that has the product key on it, like this: Windows 10 Embedded Product Key Tool

My own machine was deactivated last week and I went through hell trying to get it to reactivate (and didn't succeed). It turns out that Microsoft's activation servers were on the fritz. You can try again right now and see if that changes anything.
 
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