I was getting ready to leave my house, but I wanted to but up utorrent before I left so it could work for me while I was away. I have it set to automatically start when Windows 7 boots up. Anyways, long story short, I booted into Windows and left for my family engagement. When I came home, I turned on my monitor to find the screen all black with a not on the bottom right that said "This copy of Windows is not genuine." This is off of a fresh install (from a genuine copy) that I did two days ago. I have not activated or used any loaders, so the very fact that this screen came up is puzzling. I mean, I'm only two days in from a fresh install. It wouldn't do anything at that point, so I rebooted. Windows 7 started normally and I have not seen that message since. Any clues what might have occurred to cause that to happen??
It could be services related or possibly when you first installed the date in the bios was incorrect and after a little bit windows automatically corrected the time and then you were technically past the 30 day grace period. It happened to me. But I caught it when it told me that I had to acitvate "immediately". You may have gotten back home after midnight and the grace period fully expired.
I have got the same screen warning me it may be pirated, not genuine, blah blah. asking to activate to make sure it is genuine. its still in the 30 day window, it's just trying to get you to activate it now instead of later.
No worries. MS is to blame, as this happens when reverting from sleep mode or after the display & disk powers off/down and you restore the windows session. After I enter System settings(My Computer->Properties) everything comes back to normal, Windows is Activated.
No changes to any of the services, though I did add a couple (those related to Punkbuster). It seems to be fine now, but it really threw me off. One thing I did notice is that Windows apparently installed a definition file for Defender about the time I left home. Not sure how this relates, if at all, but that's the only thing that I can see that occurred around the same time. Especially since it wouldn't even let me access Windows. My first thought was "oh crap...Microsoft figured something out to identify those of us who go Windows via bitorrent...please, please, please don't make me go back to Vista!!!"
Take it the way I said it. Nothing to do with windows defender. It is a MS omission. Entering sleep mode makes win 7 ungenuine until you enter system properties.
I have seen non-genuine messages pop-up after waking a computer up from sleep mode. I wonder if the software protection service craps out. I remember some loader and even bios mod computers (and probably legitimate OEM machines) sometimes give non genuine messages but upon the next reboot they return to activated status, some of us thought that maybe the slic was unloaded from memory and not restored upon waking from sleep mode but maybe it is just another MS bug.
The same thing is happening to me only without the happy ending. I am showing the "not genuine" message and black desktop...but when I go to system properties as described - nothing happens. Sooo I re-entered a key and certificate per instructions to re-activate...and nothing. argh!
As a matter of fact one of those so called unofficial updates fixes this EXACT problem. Can't Remember which kb# it was though.