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XPS Studio 8100 New disk installation
I've been having problems with my original Seagate 100gb hard disk; it was causing blue screens and also nearly out of space.
I bought a new 2TB (tb, not gb... thanks for spotting it) SSD/HDD hybrid from seagate. P{lugged it in; used the Seagate utility to copy the partitions of the original disk over. So far so good. I then disconnected the old disk and started up. All was fine for a day or so, but I've just got a message saying my copy of Windows may be invalid or counterfeit - I'm assuming it was keyed somehow on the original hard disk. What can I do to address this, short of buying another copy of Windows?
osprey4
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December 14th, 2014 14:00
Hi Mark TW,
I've got that same model so maybe I can help.
The message you're getting means your installation of Win 7 has not been activated. Your copy of Windows accompanies the desktop, so you never need to buy another copy. To check your Windows activation status, do the following:
1. Open System by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, and then clicking System.
2. Under Windows activation, you can view your activation status. You can also change your product key by clicking Change product key. If you need to provide the license for your copy of Windows. you have a Windows 7 license on the top of your XPS 8100 toward the back.
Now, regarding your old hard drive. I'm thinking it's got to be 1 TB, not 100 MB. Assuming there are no hardware problems with the drive, you can still use it for extra storage or as a backup drive.
However, if you were getting blue screen errors with the old drive, chances are cloning that drive will also result in blue screen errors. Since some of these are tough to diagnose and fix, you might consider either restoring the Dell factory image (assuming your recovery partition survived the cloning process), or performing a clean installation of the OS. Please let me know if you need any help with this.
Mark TW
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December 14th, 2014 15:00
IT says its activated, but there is no option there to Change Product key. I know it should be there, as I checked this on my other PC... I was intending to format the old disk and use it maybe as a backup data drive, once I was happy with things...
Philip_Yip
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December 14th, 2014 17:00
Use the Activation Backup and Recovery Program to reapply your Dell OEM product activation:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/microsoft-product-activation/the-activation-backup-and-recovery-program-windows-vista-7-version/