Many people aren’t aware that a pre-built computer from a manufacturer like Dell or HP actually has two Windows product keys present, and the key on the Windows COA sticker isn’t actually in use. What your computer is shipped and installed with is a generic OEM product key that is the same on every computer that comes from the same manufacturer with that edition of Windows. You can test this yourself by using a, the license it displays will not be the same as what’s on the attached sticker.Unfortunately if you perform a you cannot ordinarily use this generic key and will instead have to use the one from the COA sticker. To prevent pirates easily using the key, measures are in place to make sure it only works on computers built by the manufacturer. Firstly, each computer has data added to the BIOS identifying the manufacturer. Secondly, a security certificate is installed into Windows which checks that identity in the BIOS and accepts the generic key.
Activate Windows 7 Free Download
If the BIOS, certificate and key all match up, Windows will activate without the need for the internet or a phone.Many computers that came with Windows Vista and 7 will be getting old and if you still have the original install that came on the computer, you may be thinking about a reinstall as all Windows installs degrade and slow down over time. While you can use the product key from the sticker attached to your computer, after all this time many of those stickers will now be hard to read or the characters have rubbed off completely making the key unreadable.Thankfully there are ways to backup the OEM license key and certificate from a current Windows install and then transfer them onto a completely clean installation. Activation Backup and Restore (ABR)ABR was originally designed to work on Vista only but support for Windows 7 was added in a later beta version. What it does is quite simple, extract and backup the currently installed OEM certificate and product key to a folder. You copy the folder onto a new system and the tool will reinstall the certificate and key. As the valid OEM data is still in the BIOS the computer will reactivate automatically.Backup your Vista or Windows 7 OEM license using ABR:1.
And run the executable which will extract the files to the location of your choice.2. Inside the extracted ABRbeta folder, run activationbackup.exe (administrator privileges are required). The program will find and create a backup of the certificate and a text file with the product key in the same folder.3. Copy the ABRbeta folder to a USB flash drive or another hard drive so you can access it after a new Windows install.Restore your Vista or Windows 7 OEM license onto a new install:It is important to note that you MUST install the same edition of Windows that is currently on your computer. If your computer has Windows 7 Home Premium, you must reinstall Windows 7 Home Premium or the reactivation will fail. You can and reinstall Windows 7 64-bit when your original install was Windows 7 32-bit.
The security certificate in Windows is not tied to a specific edition but the product key is.1. Perform a clean reinstall of Windows 7 or Vista (the same edition that your computer shipped with).2. During Windows installation do not enter a product key and choose to skip it.3. Locate the ABRbeta folder on your system and run the activationrestore.exe. If you receive a message on Windows 7 that the tokens.dat file is not found and Windows may be already activated, just press y to continue.The certificate and product key will be automatically installed, if you look in System Properties (right click Computer Properties) the Windows activation status should say “Windows is activated”.2. Advanced Tokens ManagerWhile the Activation Backup and Restore tool above allows you to transfer your OEM license from one install to another on the same computer, Advanced Tokens Manager will actually allow you to transfer standard Windows licenses that have been activated by phone or online as well, although certain conditions apply in those cases.
It can also backup and restore Windows 8 and Office 2010/2013 licenses.Backup your Vista or Windows 7 OEM license using Advanced Tokens Manager:1. And extract the zip to a folder of your choice, straight to flash drive or another hard drive would be best.2. Run the program and click the Activation Backup button, administrator privileges are required.3.
Read the sizable warning popup and then click Yes to allow the backup to begin.After a few seconds the process will be complete and a folder called “Windows Activation Backup” is now at the location of the executable. Inside is a tokens.dat file which contains the security certificate and an INI file with the product key, Windows version and CRC checksum.Restore your Vista or Windows 7 OEM license using Advanced Tokens Manager:1. Or 7 with the same edition that was previously installed (switching between 32-bit and 64-bit is permitted). Skip the enter product key screen during the install process.2. Run Advanced Tokens Manager and click the Activation Restore button. Note the warning popup says the process could take up to 5 minutes and all network connections will be interrupted during this time.When it’s complete System Properties will automatically be opened where you can check the activation status.
Advanced Tokens Manager requires.NET Framework v4.3. Raymond.cc’s Windows 7 OEM License InstallerThis tool is something we made a few years back after constantly being asked to reinstall Windows 7 machines and the COA sticker attached to the computer was nearly always unreadable. The only other option besides using the OEM license would be to pay for a new copy of Windows 7. This program does not work on Vista but will automatically install the correct manufacturer OEM security certificate and product key to your Windows 7 computer.The useful thing about the Windows 7 OEM License Installer program is it does not need to make a backup first so if your current Windows install is unbootable or has been already erased, this tool will work where the two above will not. Currently Windows 7 machines from Acer, Packard Bell, eMachines, Advent, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gigabyte, HP, Compaq, Lenovo, IBM, Medion, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba are supported.Install Windows 7 OEM license:1.
Because this program doesn’t rely on backups, you can straight away install the same edition of Windows 7 that was installed on your computer by the manufacturer (32-bit 64-bit swapping is permitted).2., run the program and click the “ Install Cert & Key” button. Then simply follow the prompts to install the correct security certificate and product key for your computer and version of Windows.If all has gone well the last popup will tell you Windows has been successfully activated.Note the program will only work if your computer has been manufactured from one of the companies listed above, if not it will fail to work and your install will not be activated. The Activation Status button will tell you the current Windows activation state, BIOS Info will run a separate included tool so you can analyze the system BIOS to see what manufacturer data is present.
Windows 7 OEM License Installer will reactivate your OEM copy of Windows 7 Home basic, Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate.Of course we welcome any feedback, bug reports or suggestions regarding the Windows 7 OEM License Installer. Thanks for your report.The tool does not need anything special, that includes.NET, drivers or Windows updates. It works on Home Basic, Home Premium, Pro and Ultimate 32-bit or 64-bit, but not Enterprise.I’ve used it hundreds of times over the years to reactivate people’s desktops and laptops.
If you have an antivirus installed it might interfere with the tool. Which ISO are you using and where did you get it from? Perhaps you could also mention the model(s) of laptop you have tried and the versions of Windows being installed.
Hello, i have a Win7 (Ultimate) x32bit installed in my PC through a Retail Disc i.e., Win7 Starter Disc.I had activated that version and now i have to re-install Win7 Ultimate because of some Disc indexing problem or disc error. I already have a backup of that Win7 Ultimate, can i restore that backup and then make a backup of that license copy through the tools that has been mentioned above and then can i install or restore it to my new Win7 Ultimate copy.Can anyone holler i really do not have a separate key for Win 7 Ultimate. My friend installed one time for me and i do not have another Ultimate key.
Will it work that way. Hoping for some positive feedback. Could this be used to: 1. Install Vista(using an ISO). Use a Vista OEM license activation(Programs above) that is on a machine that I own(GIVEN). Do a clean install with Vista on a better machine that has Xp SP3 and not really sure if the RAM in the XP machine is compatible with my newer Vista PC(only guaranteed to run properly on just 1 monopolized make of RAM and only supports a max of 2 GBs total, only 1 GB per socket).
The newer machine is also having major audio and System Restore issues. Restore this activation info on a clean install on what used to be XP(format it first)?If this worked, I could improve my RAM from 512 MB to up 3.512 GB(compatibility issues and max accepted RAM keeps me from adding these DIMMs to the newer machine), hopefully avoid any more issues upfront, increase the HD space from 120 -178 GB(if I chose the single PC route, XP HD space + Vista HD space), I would not have to buy any RAM sticks for the newer machine or anything else extra, and Vista is supported by Microsoft and XP no longer is(I would be using it for work). Plus, if I ever need to upgrade from Vista to 7/8/8.1, the path is there to do so(Microsoft already appears to be pulling away from Vista–as you see almost as many W7 links as some of the newer WOS, but barely any Vista links). XP is a bit better than Vista(IMO), but Vista is where I need to be now. I’m thinking might as well use the better system. WILL THESE SOFTWARES ALLOW A FORMATTED HARD DRIVE FROM ANOTHER PC(PC2) TO BE INSTALLED WITH AND ACTIVATE VISTA BASED ON THE RESTORED ACTIVATION INFO FROM A PC1?
I’d like to report how did the Windows 7 OEM License Installer worked for me.I had a Toshiba laptop that my father bought in 2010. It had to come with Windows 7 preinstalled and Windows XP on a DVD as a recovery solution, but I found there was neither a Windows 7 installation nor a recovery partition. The XP existing installation had all the Toshiba apps and drivers. I didn’t know what happened, but I wanted at least to use the Windows 7 I payed for. So I downloaded the OS from Microsoft with a good tool that gave me the link, then I installed it, after doing backups, repartitioning etc. I had no problems, except for the wireless card driver I had to download and install manually. Once installed I ran the tool.
The process of license installation began, but after installing the license the tool gave an error popup. It was something like this: “There was an error while installing the license. The process cannot continue.
Your Windows 7 copy hasn’t been activated.” I repeated the process other times, also with administrator privileges, but with no result. The SLIC BIOS tool said there was a valid licensing table.Luckily the sticker on the bottom of the laptop was still there and readable, so I inserted the product key written on it and at last I activated Windows 7.Maybe it was a problem of my computer, but I reported you this (perhaps) bug to help you improve this really useful tool. Then perhaps submit the file for all those malware/virus scanners to either white list themselves if they trust you enough or have them test it out and then come back with an answer whether they will white list it or not, because: virustotal.com/en/file/e8e1f679e26a106dc5da842adb5793ffae44aa0fe4de9eb4defab3fc885c0b5c/analysis/ and virusscan.jotti.org/en-US/filescanjob/qeg829sky9 don’t look too promising.or maybe you.don’t. want to because there IS something sinister going on that you don’t want all those brands to know about, mmm? 3/4 of the detections are from the included SLIC Toolkit. That tool has been around since 2010 and has been used by millions of people without issue.
Yet the AVs on VT love to classify it as malicious without really knowing why. Download SLIC Toolkit 3.2 from the web to check and look around to see what others say about it.Here’s a different version of our tool without it (password raymondcc):The other FPs are simply created by using the AutoIt scripting language, some AV software mis-classifies a lot of perfectly legit software because it was created in AutoIt. For example, a simple “Hello World” message box in AutoIt can create between 5 and 12 detections in VT. There’s no point reporting these because it’s been done by many people over the years, but the false detections always come back again.If you could point me to anything sinister you think might be going on, I will be happy to answer your questions. It only uses a built in Microsoft tool (Slmgr.vbs) and freely available.xrm-ms OEM license files. You or anyone else are welcome to pull this tool apart or monitor every single thing it does, but you won’t find any activity even remotely malicious. Heh, you almost sound like one of those crackers and warez group.
“Yeah, the crack’s clean, just disable your anti-virus and run the program” next minute be like “Aw my files are deleted!”Hmm, your site appears to be legitimate and only advise.legitimate. work arounds – hell you even digitally signed your website/domain – that shows something that you care about us readers.Very well, I will give benefit of a doubt because so far the downloads you’ve provided previously are clean and that these articles are supposedly genuine. ☺PS – the Lite version still scans with flags using both virustotal and jotti:P. I didn’t say the lite version was clean in VT but showing it produces 75% fewer detections because SLIC Toolkit is not included.Developers are fighting a losing battle with places like VirusTotal because they give the wrong impression programs are unsafe.
The scanners used for these services are command line versions which produce different results to the desktops versions. For example, ESET at VT flags the original OEM installer as Win32/HackTool.SLICMod.C but my ESET antivirus says it’s clean.Read about the troubles the famous Nir Sofer of Nirsoft has had with false positives on his tools over the years to see the problem.blog.nirsoft.net/2009/05/17/antivirus-companies-cause-a-big-headache-to-small-developers/blog.nirsoft.net/2015/10/18/antivirus-statistics-and-scores-according-to-false-positives-of-nirsoft-tools/.
Heh, I was only pointing it out that’s all. Never said you said it was clean.:PCLI or GUI, doesn’t matter, don’t they both use the same definitions?Ay yes, I know NirSoft.I use their “HashMyFiles” program so I can hash my files and or verify file integrity. ☺ I don’t think that program has yet been popped up yet in a virustotal scan before.but I remembering scanning the zip files and they were all clean.Ok so if we can’t trust those scanner sites like virustotal and jotti and even our own anti-malware suites, who do we trust?