Can't activate my licence on a new hdd

Hey guys,

I recently changed my hdd in my good old acer. The problem is that I can't activate my windows licence. Its already in 'use'.

I wrote to microsoft support and they said companies like Acer bind the licence to the hdd and they can't help me.

So I called Acer and they told me that if I have the installation disc (which I have) I should be able to activate my licence on a new hdd. But this isn't true.

I need to use this laptop for another 6 months before I can buy a nice desktop with ivy bridge, a motherboard which supports pci e3 and a nice kepler gpu. SO I refuse to pay another 100€ for a windows licence on a computer which should have one.

Is there a way I can fix this? I was thinking of buying an external hdd caddy and make an exact copy of my old hdd to my new one. But i'm not sure if that would work.
Or is there a way to deactivate the licence on my old hdd and reactivate it on a new one?

 

Do the phone activation.

 

If you still have the original hdd, use ABR to copy the key from old to new.

ABR (Activation Backup and Restore) | directedge.us

 

Hey Tinderbox thanks for replying so fast.

I tried that ABR thing, I formatted my new drive and tried to upload the key which I made on my old hdd. When I did this it said that the file was empty.

But, when I entered my key it said windows was genuine. Not sure if this is because the program worked (the program itself said it didn't) or because I haven't installed any windows updates yet. When I was talking to one of my friends he said that if windows wouldn't take my genuine key I could always use a different key, and as long as I didn't have a certain windows update it should work.

So, either because of the program you gave me, or because I didn't install any updates (I turned auto update off), my key is finally considered genuine again.

I hope my gaming performance won't be worse because I don't have SP1 or 2, but I rather have worse performance than having to pay 100€ for a new lincense because Acer/Microsoft can't support their customers decently.


So thanks a million Tinderbox ;-)

 

Sounds like you had a retail copy of Windows, it didn't come with the computer when new? It has different activation that cannot be transferred with ABR tool.

Cloning the old drive would have worked.

Windows activation is basically tied to the hardware combination, big manufacturers like Acer use special activation that binds to the motherboard. ABR tool transfers that data.

That should have happened in the first time If not automatically but by phone at least.

 

ABR worked fine for me when i made a clean install using a retail copy of W7 Premium, it copied my notebook pre-activated key and re-installed it fine with no problems.

 

Yes but if the original installation is also retail/OEM, it doesn't have anything to copy from and results in empty file (or something like that, I've tried but forgot).

For ABR to work, computer must have the original factory OEM installation.

 

Did you make your original recovery discs or do you have the ones from Acer? The COA on the bottom is just in case you drive fails and you did not make recovery media. Calling up Microsoft should resolve issues like that, we do that all the time in the tech shop when people don't provide us with recovery media, we do a vanilla install with an OEM disc and just activate the COA on the bottom.

 

So if I would make a copy of my old hdd to my new one, would it also be unsuccesful because there isn't anything to copy?

I used a 'vista anytime upgrade' cd which came with my laptop. I didn't get anything else with my laptop and installed a few drivers from the Acer site seperatly.

By COA you mean Contract Of Agreement? Computer Operations Administrator ? Central Operating Authority? Certificate of Authorization? Certificate of Analysis ?
You kinda got me lost there

 

Are you talking about Vista upgrade? The COA (Certificate of Authenticity) is OEM, meaning you have to use an OEM or Retail disc to get it to activate properly. Upgrade will reject the COA.

You need to find a Vista disc and reinstall the OS again and activate it properly or call up Acer and have them ship you the discs.

 

Cloning the activated windows to another drive keeps it activated. Windows doesn't really know it has moved to another drive.

The Anytime Upgrade disc is basically a standard install disc, so it needs internet activation when installed. It doesn't have anything that the ABR could use.

It already works and is activated

 

Hm thats good to know, since its happened before (on my original hdd) that after I succesfully activated my license after a format, a window would pop up after a few days/weeks saying I need to re-enter the code, after doing that it would be activated permantly.

If I run into trouble again i'll call acer and ask them to send me a disk but if it will be too expensive, i'll just buy an external hdd caddy and clone my old hdd.

Does anybody know good cloning software? I doubt I could just copy paste all the files

 

Discs are I believe 30-40 (you are in EU though, prices maybe different there). Once you got everything setup, you can clone through Acronis (more user friendly IMO than Ghost).