I have a Dell M6400 (BIOS A09) that was happily running Win 7 Ultimate until the most recent updates. After a ton of reading here, I think that I've learned enough to ask intelligently for help. (And I'll gladly read more if someone can point me.) Thanks in advance for your expert insight. My machine was shipped with Vista (and an XP downgrade) and I installed the Dell OEM "auto-activation" Win 7 Ultimate on it. I believe that the problem is that my SLIC certificate (in the BIOS?) somehow says that I'm only allowed to run Vista and not 7. Does that sound right? I've DLed SLIC ToolKit 3.2 to see what I can learn, but it doesn't seem to tell me any licesning details. Can someone please help me understand what I need to do to update my BIOS or SLIC table to happily like Win 7 again? I'm betting that it is a simple few byte update somewhere if I just knew how and where. I'm also slightly scared to brick my machine (as it is my only real PC here), so I'm treading very cautiously and asking for help before I do anything stupid. Thanks in advance for your help.
You have probably installed the Windows Activation Technology (WAT) update KB 971033 and because you used the "Dell OEM auto-activation" DVD which I assume you downloaded the WAT update has found the loader used on those "pre-activated" DVDs and rendered your installation invalid. If this is what has happened to you there are a host of ways to fix this - search for threads about KB 971033 and follow instructions on how to fix it. It is not just a "simple few byte update to fix it" but it isn't that complicated either - it involves removing the loader M$ have targetted (on the so-called "auto-activating" DVD and now on your hard drive) and replacing it with one the KB971033 update doesn't break - apparently Daz's works - and re-validating after some tinkering. If it is this update that has broken your system when you become genuine again you can uninstall it - and I would as it is designed to update itself over time so you never know what it will do in the future but I suspect loaders that are manually installed are not M$ prime targets - self activating DVDs that can be sold to unsuspecting "customers" are. Now some tips :- Turn off "automatic updates" - change to notify before install. Never just blindly install updates unless you know what it is for - it could break something even though it is not meant to - even M$ are not perfect. If you have any doubt create a backup that you can restore from - a bit of work but better than no rescue. You should have a safe place to store system backups - a seperate partition at the least BUT a second drive is better as you can also store all your data (documents, game saves, music etc) here safe from an OS crash.
Thanks for the advice. I have already turned off autoupdates to avoid future problems. However, I think that you misunderstood my original setup a bit. I didn't need to apply any loader or hack to my machine originally. Since it was a Dell machine that also ships with Win 7 now, I simply updated the BIOS to the latest rev and the Dell OEM installation DVD auto-activated by itself. (I downloaded the DVD, so I can't be 100% sure that it was pure, but I believe that it was. Is there someway to check?) My theory is that the OEM activation was not previously checking if my BIOS license (SLIC license?) really allowed Win 7. (My machine was only OEM licensed for Vista.) So it gave me a "pass" that it should not have originally done. Does that make any sense? I know that my machine and BIOS can now ship with Win 7, so I believe that I just need someway to switch the BIOS/SLIC certificate to permit Win 7. Of course, I could be all wrong, but that seems to fit what I've read so far. Thanks!
In the slic table it will have model correspondence with cert. e.g. dell, hp, acer, Toshiba, etc....Keys will be universal or generic with version. e.g. pro, ultimate. Then RTM is the mostly used ISO that I know of. Depending on your slic being 2.1 you should be able to install RTM and then just deal with cert and key. That's all I know
Thanks. So my working theory is that if I could get the proper SLIC in my BIOS, I'd be all set. Of course, I'm not sure why it would not be correct since it is a normal Dell BIOS which should already have the right SLIC info. (And it worked happly until the new update.) Unless, that SLIC info is stored outside the main BIOS and somehow encodes that I' all allowed to run Vista? Can I just dump my current SLIC info to compare against a known good Dell record to see if they match? If so, how?
So if the SLIC tables are in the BIOS and I have a normal BIOS from the Dell site, why would my BIOS not have a SLIC compatible with Win 7? Those values did not change from yesterday (genuine) until today (not genuine). I've extracted my BIOS file (A09) and have been looking at it in WinHex, but I can't find the data in the SLIC ToolKit dump. Should that data be in there somewhere?
Certificate Checked: I DLed the Certificate for Dell OEM and was able to match it exactly to an area in my tokens.dat (as pointed to by SLIC ToolKit). So it seems like my certificate is correct. So I assume that means that my certificate is correct. SLIC Table Checked: I used SLIC ToolKit to save the "SLIC Dump from Memory" to a file and found that it matched exactly to the file "Dell[DELL-QA09-NVDA]2.1.BIN" in the standard "SLIC 2.1 BINS" zip. So that seems to say that my SLIC table is fine also. What's left that could be wrong? Dell Asset tag weirdness?
That's what I thought, too. Alas, the little app (from the Genuine site) tells me that BillG is not happy with my Windows.
just do what NoJuan999 said and see if you activate if you activate with a diffrent key than wola the key is the problem
OK, I gave it a whirl. Unfortunately, the OEM ultimate keys come up for me the same as the Dell one. They are not recognized as genuine.
Did you enter a key and then re-Validate after each new key was entered ??? You may have to reboot after entering each key to be sure it is seen properly by Win 7.