Windows 7 Professional Product Key Activation Issues

I think it is best if I give some background information on my situation.

Originally I had a Windows Vista notebook, when Microsoft offered the Windows 7 Upgrade discs for $50 I took it.

Forward to October, my Windows 7 install discs arrived. I upgraded my OS to Windows 7 Home Premium from Vista, no problems whatsoever.

Sometime in late December I decided to go ahead and take Microsoft's offer of getting Windows 7 Professional for $30, knowing that when I get a new notebook it will already be installed w/ 7 and I could use the product key to upgrade to Professional.

I did this on my old notebook and activated the Professional OS with no hassle. Now here in the present I have my new notebook and sold my old one w/ the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade discs to my brother.

I used the Professional product key to upgrade my OS from Home Premium to Professional on my new computer. The upgrade happened with no problem but now I'm facing a problem.

When I try to activate Windows and enter that product key, I get an error message informing me that the key can only be used for upgrades not a clean install.

That confuses me, I was able to use the key on my old notebook's OS just fine and activated it back then. Now Windows won't let me activate my Professional upgrade on my new computer? What's the difference? Both times it was Windows 7 Home Premium and I'm not using the product key to try to activate Clean Install, only to activate an upgrade.

Should I just call Microsoft to have them activate my Professional OS?

 

Because the upgrade version is mean to upgrade from previous version of windows not from home premium.

 

That would make sense, except I was able to use the upgrade key before to upgrade my Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional.

 

Read this article:
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

 

Yes, this is a good work around if you are having issues doing a clean install over another OS, or need to do a clean install on a new drive. Somehow, Method 1 was giving me issues, so I just followed Method 3 - essentially, a double install of Windows 7 ("upgrading" from Win7 to Win7), which was successful.

 

I just tried doing Method 3 (had to wait until I had access to an external optical drive) and tried it with the Windows 7 Professional disc Microsoft gave me (the Back Up DVD) and entered the code.

Tried activating it online, got a message that my key wouldn't work once more.

 

Does it give you a screen to call Microsoft and activate with like a 30 digit code or something? Either way I would call Microsoft and tell them that you bought this upgrade DVD and it says it isn't valid. At least they can tell you what your options are according to Microsoft, and maybe they can get it to work for you. Just put in your thick Indian accent babelfish.

 

Here is the image:



Definitely not looking forward to calling Microsoft to solve this. -_-

I'm sure that they won't solve this and instead they're going to tell me to purchase a Windows Anytime Upgrade Key.

Would have been cheaper for me to simply ask Sony to install Windows Professional for $50. What's worse, I can't go back to using Home Premium since I lack an install disc.

Maybe I'll try Sony's Recovery partition this weekend.

 

What are you talking about.,.. click on "Contact Microsoft to help resolve this problem". You'll get a machine asking your the product key, you say it. Activation will fail, and get to someone. You say what you did.
Installed Win7 Upgrade on a computer that has a previous version of Windows but was not installed because I formatted the HDD. They will give you a force manual activation code, and you will be ready to go.

 

Thank you everyone, Goodbytes I did what you said and called Microsoft (this time was much more pleasant than last time on Saturday) and in less than an hour they activated my product key.