Likes: 
So I have this Acer Veriton desktop that runs Windows 7 Pro. It's been a good performer for a couple of years but yesterday it got some Windows Updates, failed to install them and kept rebooting. Then the wallpaper disappeared and I got a black screen. When I checked the error number for the failure, it informed me that Windows 7 thought it was now a pirate copy. Using the validation tool from Microsoft I got the result that I better buy a new copy right now - or else.
I called Microsoft authentication support and they told me that they couldn't give me a new key since the one I had was an OEM licence. I then talked to Acer and they told me that I couldn't even get the key as it was hard coded into the BIOS of the machine. Right.
The only answer was the obvious one:
Nuke and repave. I had my data backed up, but it still took me a day to reinstall all the applications and configure them. Then there was the small matter of recopying 50GB of photos back to the reformatted hard drive. While doing this I had my wife at my ear wondering why this happened. if I knew that, maybe I could have prevented it in the first place. I tried a system restore before going back to factory defaults with no success.
I'm typing this post on a Linux machine. I wonder why.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Martin
