Windows 7 not genuine after clone

[stevenrw]

Hello everybody, some assistance please.
I have just installed a new WD drive into a friends laptop which has been running W7 Home Premium for some time, but was slowing to a crawl.
The cloning was not without its issues as the Acronis WD edition (and indeed the full version) strongly recommends the drive to be cloned to be in its final location (ie installed in the laptop). Unfortunately, despite the old drive (in a caddy) being recognised in the BIOS when changing to boot from USB, the machine refused to boot.
So I tried doing it the "normal" way and having the new drive in the caddy.
Cloning started but failed.
So, luckily I had made an image in Acronis so I restored this to the new drive and after having some problems booting, "Repair Windows" from the original disc (Vista Upgrade edition) sorted things very quickly and its been working fine.
But now, a few days later, she's telling me that its throwing up a message to the effect that the machine is not running genuine windows, which of course it is.
Now theres all sorts of chatter on the web about this and whilst I do Google to find answers, I tend to trust the people here more, so ...
Has anybody had this issue, and should I maybe redo the cloning. If so what cloning software is useable and free. I looked at Clonezilla but it seems over complicated, and in any case, the restore from image should (and seemed) to do the trick.
I did consider doing a clean install, but I'm really confused over what an "Upgrade Version" should do. I'm assuming it does not contain files which are common to both Vista and W7 so a clean install would have chunks missing?

[Steve]

I can't give you a guaranteed correct answer but I assume the hardware change has caused the error and any other attempts at cloning may not improve the situation.


Clean installs can be undertaken from upgrade versions but they need a simple registry hack prior to activation

[Technical Ben]

Seems you can re-register (force a re-check). The change in HDD may be enough for the PC to think it's a "different" PC.
But in all honesty, the whole point of Genuin Vantage (spell?) is that it checks online to make sure your the only one with that key, so it shoudl then know your not pulling a fast one. If it does not... then well, it ain't doing it's job.

Solution:
http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-activation/221896-cloned-win7-disk-now-its-not-genuine.html

Seems nice and easy, one command typed into Command Prompt launched in Admin mode. I say easy... you need to retype the key. (If you don't have the key to hand, you can get it from the registry, but we will jump that hoop if and when needed )

PS, AFAIK as "upgrade" disk is the same, just the key tells it to look for a previous install + key before it allows it to work.

[zappaDPJ]

I've seen this happen a lot with OEM Vista. I phoned Microsoft support when it last happened but they refused to reactivate it so I employed other methods. I don't really understand it as I recently upgraded my PC hard drives, changed them all to SSDs, and during the process had two copies of Windows running using the same key while I copied everything across. No problems there and the second copy did activate as it proceeded to download over two hundred and fifty updates.

Short version, I can't really help, sorry

[pctech]

Never tried it with Windows Millennium Edition 2.0 Vista but you should be able to do a double-install to get round the upgrade limitation.

You do the first install and decline Setup's invitation to enter the product key and activate.

When the install completes and you finally arrive on the desktop you'll be asked again to enter the key, shut down the machine and make it boot from the disk again, setup should run and treat the install as an existing Windows installation and allow you to proceed, once this has been done you should be able to activate normally.

if that's too much of a bother you could always ring MS and get them to handle the activation over the phone, my approach is to avoid registry 'hacking' wherever possible.

[pctech]

What reason did they give for not reactivating Zap?

Did you buy an OEM version to install on your own machine? (Full versions have returned with 8.1)

[zappaDPJ]

What reason did they give for not reactivating Zap?

Did you buy an OEM version to install on your own machine? (Full versions have returned with 8.1)

They said it wasn't legitimate. It was OEM (volume licensed), purchased as a licensing reseller from an authorized distributor. It was their mistake and as I said before, not uncommon with Vista. I don't recall it seeing happen with a legitimate installation of Windows 7 though.