I have a question that is kind of bothering me. I love this forum and like to play around with this stuff on VM's and a test computer it's a lot of fun but I have two computers with legitimate Home Premium installed which is more than enough for my real computing needs.The question is I entered an ultimate OEM key that matches my computer into anytime upgrade just to see what it would do. To my astonishment about 10 minutes later I had an ultimate edition lol. Now I'm kind of worried since this is my main box and I really don't want to lose it. Should I be concerned about this? It was so easy and now I'm leery of updates and stuff which was never a concern with this machine. I don't really use any of the features except xp mode and frankly virtualbox is much better. Is there any way to detect an illegitimate anytime upgrade?
The problem you will have is that you are not activated, it may have upgraded but you are probably back to the 30 days to activate notification in system properties. There is a trick to downgrade but I don't remember off hand how to do it. You will probably wind up doing a clean install unless you want to use Daz's loader.
No because Windows Anytime Upgrade does not activate your copy of windows so in other words, all you did was upgrade a licensed or trial copy of windows 7 to another trial copy of windows 7. In fact any retail key can also run windows anytime upgrade. I have proven that lol. Google "windows 7 downgrade mydigitallife" to get instructions on how to downgrade but I think it was in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT and you have to change the version name like HomePremium on 2 registry entries to perform the downgrade using a CD of windows 7 that you want lol.
I am activated though. I ran all the slmgr commands and all say good to go. It can't be that easy though can it? Even downloaded that patch and MSE and passed. Oh and btw these were computers bought with Home Premium installed so not retail.
When you say a key that matches your computer, what computer do you have and does it have SLIC 2.1 and did you install a cert? You may be right and it may be activated if you have the cert installed, the key installed AND your bios has a 2.1 slic
My guess is your computer came from the store/company with windows 7 home premium OEM preinstalled. If so then you have slic 2.1 in your bios already without modding it like Dolorous Edd said. To confirm that run Slic dump toolkit and it will tell you that you have slic 2.1 installed. Oh btw, you should be good to go with WAT because you did not hack your bios to add slic 2.1 installed. Normally when you buy an upgrade key for Windows Anytime Upgrade it is just one of the OEM keys but they were already leaked so I don't think you have to worry about that lol
Yes edited my post but after reply. didn't install cert but probably alreaady had one it's an Asus and just put ultimate OEM key into anytime upgrade window.It checked then rebooted and I had ultimate didn't take more than 10 minutes.Didn't think it would work frankly and just tried it on a whim.
Then you will most likely be protected against WAT because you did not use any activation exploits. )
Thanks for the replys! If worst comes to worst I have a system image of the home premium version, I guess that would load? Should be more carefull when playing around I guess though heheh. Was kind of hesitant to post this since if it really works and is so simple well...
It's ok I would get either vmware or virtual box to test things like that so if something goes south you always have the physical system untouched. BTW vmware is not free but you can find a serial for it anywhere and IDK about virtual box cause I never used it.
Not true absoulutly no point of trying oem SLP installs on vmware unlesss you have modded and added slic to the vmware bios.