None - authentic windows 7?

[lixah]

Hey guys, firstly i'd like to say this is all hypothetical,

what would happen if somoene took a computer to the shop to be repaired, and it had a none authentic windows 7 version on it, and what if the motherboard was to be replaced, and the shop said they could find the windows key from the drive.

 

[aford10]

That's a pretty specific 'hypothetical' situation.

 

[wanamingo]

"Hypothetically" it wouldn't matter. You are paying them to fix the hardware. You could remove the HDD bring it in and tell them you want a new MOBO, if you are paying who cares if you have a cracked copy of Win7. From running a tech center for 2 years i can tell you from experience i don't give a *** about what your running as long as you're paying. Now with that in mind there are a lot of freeware you can use to find your Win7 product key. I think jellybean key finder will do it for you just research online.

 

[JDFan]

They'd just install the new MOBO and leave the Win7 asking for reauthentication (since swapping the MOBO will invalidate the authentication anyway) then when you get it home you'd have 30 days (IIRC) to connect to Microsoft and reauthenticate the OS -- The shop is not going to care whether it is a genuine copy of the OS or not since they can reinstall it in either case and just leave it asking you to reauthenticate it within the 30 day window MS gives you.

 

[mavroxur]

We'd swap the board, and if it complains that it can't activate because it's an invalid or volume key, and you can't cough up a valid key, we charge you for the motherboard and labor, and send you on your way with the machine.


If the machine fails to boot at all with the existing load, and you can't provide a valid key, then you get a machine that is fixed, but won't boot. Either way, we get paid for the motherboard and labor. It's against MS's policies for a service center or company to install a copy of Windows on a machine that does not have a genuine product key with it. You can't extract product keys and such from the existing install. Needs to be a genuine MS product key, unless the user owns a volume license and can provide proof, as well as the cert with the key.

 

[lixah]

thanks for the helpful replys