Hey guys, since my cheap'o Ultimate key I bought at some online auction just got nuked by MS, I have decided to go with a Home Premium OEM, purchased at Amazon. Anyways, I'd hate to lose my system by doing a complete installation... Questions: Does the registry hack where you change EditionID and ProductName still work? If it doesn't, are there other ways? Can I even "upgrade" the system using a non-upgrade version of Windows? Will the fact that my system's language is English, while the OEM DVD is German, negatively affect the process? Finally, would you recommend just biting the bullet and going with a fresh installation? Thanks!
To be honest I would always do fresh install just backup any files or documents you need to another partition, hard drive or cd/dvd, Obviously it is your choice not to sure if downgrade would work with different language but if you do try i would still backup your files just in case.
Alright, so I'm looking at a new installation. Thanks for your replies! Edit: Is there any way to remove the annoying "windows is not genuine" pop-up until my new DVD/key gets delivered? I don't need to make it genuine, just want to use the pc without this crap for a day or so (Amazon premium, so should be here tomorrow).
You can use it as trial if ur just gonna use it for a day or two.. just dont enter any key during install..
Thanks, mate. However, I'm talking about removing the non-genuine message from my current, formerly genuine version. As soon as the new one arrives, I'm going to re-install.
Oh s**t ok Well you can uninstall all keys and go back to trialmode. Should be info in the officiall repository, its a sticky thread.
Thanks - I *think* that did the trick. Windows complained about not being genuine on startup, but the system properties show that I have 3 days until it must be activated. Since I'll be nuking the system tomorrow, that's just fine.