During the madness of trying to install OSX Lion to dual boot alongside windows 7, I restored the original un-modded bios and I think that caused windows 7 to be deactivated. Now I can't get it to activate with the known working modded bios. Reinserting OEM cert/key and running WGA online doesn't help. Any surgical fix to avoid reinstalling windows 7 again?
Not sure whether this will help but had a dell that had a genuine w7 OEM activated via SLIC 2.1. They replaced the faulty MB and windows de activated, then realised the replacement MB had an older BIOS that only had SLIC 2.0, so re flashed with latest BIOS from Dell that was 2.1, and still not activated. But it was as simple as clicking activate windows from taskbar or start menu prompt, didn't need to run WGA or go online, then it activated again.
First thing you need to do is download slic dump toolkit and check you have slic 2.1 in bios and that you are installing correct certificate.
Oh well, I gave up after fiddling around for half an hour and went ahead with reinstalling windows 7. Basically windows 7 gets activated in "initial 30-day grace period" mode but not in "not genuine" mode.