this is what he said read the part in () he means tagged by MS.. you have been told many times what to do to get your system fixed yet you are still here trying to trouble shoot why? "By OEM I mean the Dell or HP or Gateway or Whatever OEM Disks that Manufacturers Distribute with their PC's. (these have been getting tagged non-genuine many times for whatever reason)'
Just reinstall and be done with it. NoJuan999 knows what he's talking about. I would follow his directions.
Please don't mistake my curiosity for lack of appreciation. I really do appreciate the help and learning that I've been able to do here. However, I find this to be a rather interesting learning opportunity and intriguing question. I had previously thought that having a real Dell machine with a real SLIC 2.1 BIOS made my installation as good as one from the factory. Clearly I was wrong and didn't understand enough. So now I'm trying to learn more. It is possible that the answer is as simple as a bad OEM disk. If so, reinstalling is the only answer. However, instead of taking the "quick fix" approach, I'm also interested in learning more about how these things work... and why I was so wrong initially. If nothing else, I'll learn more myself, and it is possible that this thread may be useful to others Googling in the future. In the interest of experimentation and learning, I'm tempted to try a few more exercises, and I'm curious to know the experts thoughts about them: 1) Insert a non-OEM key on my current installation and see if it will validate as genuine. (Would that count as an "activation" on the key? Also, I'm not sure where to get one easily...) 2) Install again from an "expert approved" Dell OEM DVD. Anyone know where I can get one that is good for certain? 2a) Actually Step a) here would be to run a checksum of my install ISO to compare against a known good Dell OEM ISO. However, since there may be multiple valid revs, this test result is only interesting if mine ends up being a perfect match. 2b) Maybe I could even do a repair installation from a known good Del OEM DVD. Might that "fix" whatever odd piece is tagged on my current environment? 3) Hear from anyone who has real Dell hardware and a real Dell SLIC 2.1 BIOS that is still able to happily run Win 7 on a machine originally licensed for Vista. (If so, that would crush my theory that there is something odd in the Dell Asset Tag that brands me as Vista only.) Thanks again for every who has read this thread and offered their thoughts and advice.
your OEM disc is most likely fine and not a "bad OEM disk" you are reading what has been stated wrong .. the OEM discs are being flagged by Microsoft as non Genuine Operating Systems .. has nothing to do with having a bad OEM disk.... and if that is the case there is nothing you can do to make it genuine in its current state .. and as stated before just reinstall RTM and be done with it
Interesting idea. But if the a real Dell OEM disk is being flagged, then lots of real Dell people would be yelling right now, no?
1. You would need to Buy a Copy of Windows 7 or an MSDN Technet account or buy one online from a possible scammer. 2. Reformat and Re-install with an Unmodifed ISO - My Choice. 3. As I have stated: Some Real, Valid, Purchased DELL PC's with SLIC 2.1 in BIOS from the Factory are having this same problem. Some HP systems are also having the same problem. To correct this problem, I have heard from people that re-installed with the Retail ISO and then re-installed the Certificate and Key and they Miraciously were seen as Genuine when they re-Validated Online. Some people had to use the Dell Asset tag utility but that was because the SLIC was "hidden" in the BIOS and they had to "unlock" it. Yours is already visible to SLIC Dump Toolkit, theirs was NOT until they reset the asset tag. Note: If anyone with a Purchased Dell PC sees anything amiss with these statements please correct me.
that depends a lot of people are like me and the first thing to do after buying a new Computer wether it is a laptop or desktop is do a freash install of what ever OS they like
Thanks again for your thoughts. Is there a "repair" option on a Win 7 Retail disk? I wonder if that would do anything interesting. It doesn't seem likely to hurt, does it? Also, are all those eBay key sellers, scammers? They seem to cheap to be real, but I have to think that M$ would crush them with a single email to eBay if they were all pirates.
Yes, that is true. But likewise I'm sure that there are many thousands of Dell buyers who just deal with whatever OS Dell gives them. If more than a few dozen of them were screwed by the new M$ update, it would be all over the Web.
I don't think you aren't appreciative, but I do think this thread shows you've exhausted just about every avenue to avoid a reinstall. At this point, you would be better served to back up your data and do what NJ is recommending. If NJ knew of anyway you could proceed without a reinstall, he would tell you.
Don't worry about it, if that happens MS will have to give out a new Dell OEM key which will appear here just like the rest of them did and you can simply change to the new key. BTW at least with the RC version if you loose your activation and don't want to worry about the Grace Period then just stop and disable the service "Software Protection". IF you do you will not be able to get updates though so just keep that in mind but I doubt you will have to resort to that lol.
This is spot on. I recently did a Dell laptop (Inspiron 1545) which came with Vista and was purchased a while before Win7 came out and thus did not qualify for a free upgrade - however it still had SLIC 2.1 in the BIOS and it did NOT need any asset tag unlocking. Only Dell machines that were purchased with no operating system need the asset tag unlocking proceedure, if it came with vista it will have a valid SLIC 2.0 or 2.1. Anyway since my Dell had SLIC 2.1, all I did was acquire the 7 Retail ISO (as others have mentioned), install it, and activated by inserting cert+key with the help of Daz loader (I did not actually install the Daz loader - Daz's program allows very simple activation for SLIC 2.1 BIOS's too). This is just confirming what NoJuan999 has said with a firsthand account, install the untouched retail per his advice and your problems will be solved - a BIOS mod should not be needed for you
I have dell inspiron 530 it came with vista and had slic 2.0 in bios i have modded bios just added slic 2.1 i can still activate vista and and windows 7 iv'e never touched the asset tag.
Looking at the slic table in the original bios from dell and the slic dump toolkit, it looks like you have a loader from your preactivated dvd. The original bios has a Dell M09 slic while you show a Dell QA09 slic. Resolving it is very simple. Run Daz' loader and press Uninstall button After reboot, install the dell oem key and Go online and validate.
Thanks for the great first-hand experience. This is exactly may case, and based on everyone's great advice here that it the route that I will probably take next. I didn't realize that the Daz Loader could be useful even if it is not installed. Can you please explain that part to me or point me somewhere that I can learn about how one uses it without installing? (In your case with SLIC 2.1 already, why did you even need the Daz loader? Just to install the certificate?) Also, what are the chances that M$ will decide to next target installations from retail disks that are using OEM keys? If they can somehow decide, based on something in the Dell OEM DVD that was floating around, that my installation is not Genuine, then it seems like an easy check for them would be to find some fingerprint in the Retail DVD and make sure the people are using a retail key instead of an OEM key.
This is a very interesting piece of information. When I was poking through my BIOS dump I saw that the signature looked like M09 yet the SLIC ToolKit said QA09. I figured that I simply didn't understand something about how things got translated from the BIOS into memory and then shown in SLIC ToolKit. However, if this is a difference, then I do have a loader that I never expected! Will the Daz loader know if it is already installed and not screw up anything if I try to uninstall it? Or, is there some clean way to check for a loader on my system in general? (If I do have an unexpected loader, I have no idea which one it would be, so it might not be Daz. Will Daz uninstall any loader or just itself?)