So what happened to my Computer...
If you've been following my Twitter for the past 2 weeks, you witnessed the quest for Genuine Windows take a nosedive then come right back up.
Here's how it all started...
Paul Thurrott repeated a blog post on the Genuine Windows Blog about the "Windows Activation Technologies Update" or "WATU" on his podcast on the TWiT Network called "Windows Weekly". When I got my 32bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate, I never found out how it got installed. It was a "courtesy" repair job from a major retailer here in Canada and it was half the price of getting Win 7 OEM just to get 1 hard drive with it pre-loaded.
Not knowing how the operating system got installed is a real pain because you never really know if the repair was done with non-genuine techniques or genuine from a disc.
Well, Tuesday the 16th came and I installed WATU. Went into the Task Scheduler and let it run once. Rebooted, and it was indeed non-genuine. I have been ripped off.
Looking back, I noticed 2 things that might have tipped off the OS was not genuine:
1. The "Change Product Key" link was not present on the "View basic system info" page (the one where you have to right-click "Computer" in the Start Menu and go to Properties)
2. The Recovery Disc I burnt had the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD" text in German, not English.
What did I have to do? Buy Windows... offline. But first, I wiped the drive using my Recovery Disc and the DISKPART command. (I should have done an HDDErase, but didn't and I think my SSD speeds are a little slower than normal due to that.)
I decided I finally needed 64bit Windows, so on Wednesday I got an OEM Genuine DVD (with Holograms and a Certificate of Authenticity (COA)) from one of Canada's big DIY Builder retailers, NCIX. Installed it and restored all programs and backups and only around yesterday did I get everything back to normal.
It only cost me $220CAD to get this copy, compared to the kit online that costs $30-$40 more.
No worries now... And I'm not installing WATU on this new clean install since I know I installed it.
Here's how it all started...
Paul Thurrott repeated a blog post on the Genuine Windows Blog about the "Windows Activation Technologies Update" or "WATU" on his podcast on the TWiT Network called "Windows Weekly". When I got my 32bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate, I never found out how it got installed. It was a "courtesy" repair job from a major retailer here in Canada and it was half the price of getting Win 7 OEM just to get 1 hard drive with it pre-loaded.
Not knowing how the operating system got installed is a real pain because you never really know if the repair was done with non-genuine techniques or genuine from a disc.
Well, Tuesday the 16th came and I installed WATU. Went into the Task Scheduler and let it run once. Rebooted, and it was indeed non-genuine. I have been ripped off.
Looking back, I noticed 2 things that might have tipped off the OS was not genuine:
1. The "Change Product Key" link was not present on the "View basic system info" page (the one where you have to right-click "Computer" in the Start Menu and go to Properties)
2. The Recovery Disc I burnt had the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD" text in German, not English.
What did I have to do? Buy Windows... offline. But first, I wiped the drive using my Recovery Disc and the DISKPART command. (I should have done an HDDErase, but didn't and I think my SSD speeds are a little slower than normal due to that.)
I decided I finally needed 64bit Windows, so on Wednesday I got an OEM Genuine DVD (with Holograms and a Certificate of Authenticity (COA)) from one of Canada's big DIY Builder retailers, NCIX. Installed it and restored all programs and backups and only around yesterday did I get everything back to normal.
It only cost me $220CAD to get this copy, compared to the kit online that costs $30-$40 more.
No worries now... And I'm not installing WATU on this new clean install since I know I installed it.
posted by Jack Zhang at 2/20/2010 03:26:00 AM
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