win7 cannot verify cd-key

I got win7 professional upgrade as a college student and I had this installed in my gateway for past 6 months, however my laptop died on me and I just received new Asus with Vista on it.
I formated the drive to do clean install and after everything is installed when Windows tries to verify itself online is says
....... this cd key cannot be used on this computer...... type different cd key in

Is this due to changing machine hardware or is this due to fresh install ? I'm unsure whether the cd key was tagged to my old gateway's motherboard or if it's the issue of upgrade only disk installed on clean hdd.

 

If it is an issue do to a fresh install (no previous version of Windows on the HDD), installing the upgrade again over itself (without formatting again) will allow you to use the CD key to activate.

If the cd key was tagged to your old Gateway computer as is most likely the case, activate by phone when trying to activate and if you are transfered to a real person at microsoft just briefly explain that the original computer Windows 7 Pro was install on no longer exists due to complete failure and you are trying to install it on a new computer. They should give you a new key or an activation code (or both).

 

Use the phone activation system. Most likely it will transfer you to a microsoft operator. Explain that you are simply transferring the Win7 key to a different computer and that you have completely uninstalled Win7 on your gateway (which you NEED to do). Activation is weird sometimes.

 

K, I'll try to do phone activation

I did fresh/clean install without activation code then I did another upgrade install on top of that with activation code with option for automatic verification once online. I thought maybe I installed it wrong, but it might be tagged to hardware like you guys are saying, will have to check with microsoft.

 

Just do the registry hack mentioned in Paul Thurrott's site for clean installing Windows 7 upgrade version in a new HDD.