Windows 7 Home Basic - Discs

Bismuth

Bismuth

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Hi All,

I have a laptop with a W7 Home Basic license attached to it. The problem is, Win7 Home Premium is installed on it, with a fake licence, so now it says that the Windows is fake etc.

I figure that all I need are Win7 Home Basic Discs, then can install/activate it with the attached licence. It's a work laptop, and I have a genuine license, just need the discs.

Does anyone have a Win7 Home Basic Discs I could borrow/use, sans license as I have that already, so that I can install the correct version?. I have Win7 Professional at home, so that doesn't really help much, and our IT people don't have ANY CDs/DVDs. It is an HP laptop, but it seems that the recovery partition has also been deleted, and HP want to charge me R400 for reinstalling the OS, that I already have a valid license for.

B
 
Use the Pro disk and make an iso, open the iso using powerISO or similar and remove ei.cfg. Burn the iso to dvd. Now all the windows 7 editions will be available for installation. Use the COA key to activate.
 
Once you've installed a Windows edition you can't officially "downgrade" to a lower edition without doing a clean install. However, there is a workaround for it: by editing the relevant registry entries and then doing an in-place upgrade. A quick Google search should point you in the right direction :) You can also download the Home Basic ISO straight from Microsoft, which is fine as you have a genuine license.

Also, out of curiosity, is it really a work policy of yours to allow fake licenses? I'm genuinely curious.
 
vinodh said:
Use the Pro disk and make an iso, open the iso using powerISO or similar and remove ei.cfg. Burn the iso to dvd. Now all the windows 7 editions will be available for installation. Use the COA key to activate.
Click to expand...

Yes, I did find out about this during my Google searches, mind end up just doing this.

bekdik said:
Try Control panel / System then change product key
Click to expand...

Thing is, the key I have is for Basic, and the version installed is Premium, so doesn't help, but thanks!

dovij said:
Once you've installed a Windows edition you can't officially "downgrade" to a lower edition without doing a clean install. However, there is a workaround for it: by editing the relevant registry entries and then doing an in-place upgrade. A quick Google search should point you in the right direction :) You can also download the Home Basic ISO straight from Microsoft, which is fine as you have a genuine license.

Also, out of curiosity, is it really a work policy of yours to allow fake licenses? I'm genuinely curious.
Click to expand...

I don't know the "history" of the laptop, was used by a guy who has since been fired and wouldn't give anyone the password, so "they" got our outsourced IT guy to "fix" it. I guess installed a pirated version of Premium was his fix. I wasn't really involved with that process, am just speculating about the installation.

I might just use the fix, or just download the ISO and take it from there.

B
 
If you live near Centurion, bring the laptop around and i'll sort it out for you.
 
Bismuth said:
I have a laptop with a W7 Home Basic license attached to it. The problem is, Win7 Home Premium is installed on it, with a fake licence, so now it says that the Windows is fake etc.

I figure that all I need are Win7 Home Basic Discs, then can install/activate it with the attached licence. It's a work laptop, and I have a genuine license, just need the discs.
Click to expand...

The fake problem you could probably fix with DAZ's Windows Loader.

For genuine MS ISO images browse here, http://forums.mydigitallife.info/forums/16-Windows-7 you will even find OEM iso images for specific brands.
 
Bismuth said:
Hi All,

I have a laptop with a W7 Home Basic license attached to it. The problem is, Win7 Home Premium is installed on it, with a fake licence, so now it says that the Windows is fake etc.

I figure that all I need are Win7 Home Basic Discs, then can install/activate it with the attached licence. It's a work laptop, and I have a genuine license, just need the discs.

Does anyone have a Win7 Home Basic Discs I could borrow/use, sans license as I have that already, so that I can install the correct version?. I have Win7 Professional at home, so that doesn't really help much, and our IT people don't have ANY CDs/DVDs. It is an HP laptop, but it seems that the recovery partition has also been deleted, and HP want to charge me R400 for reinstalling the OS, that I already have a valid license for.

B
Click to expand...

Hey

I have a Win 7 Home Basic disc for you.

Can get it to you today still if needed.
 
Last edited:
Bismuth dropped of the machine at my house a short while ago. First thing I noticed was that the recovery partition was still there but not accessible. The boot sector was deleted during installation of Windows Home Premium. I tried to recover the boot sector or just access the recovery partition but failed.

I'm busy now with a clean installation of Windows 7. Good part about it is that there won't be any HP bloatware on the machine. The bad part is that the person who installed Windows 7 Home Premium on the machine did not make recovery disks which would have made this problem much easier to solve.
 
Indeed I did, thanks for the assistance, vinodh!

vinodh said:
Bismuth dropped of the machine at my house a short while ago. First thing I noticed was that the recovery partition was still there but not accessible. The boot sector was deleted during installation of Windows Home Premium. I tried to recover the boot sector or just access the recovery partition but failed.

I'm busy now with a clean installation of Windows 7. Good part about it is that there won't be any HP bloatware on the machine. The bad part is that the person who installed Windows 7 Home Premium on the machine did not make recovery disks which would have made this problem much easier to solve.
Click to expand...
 
vinodh said:
Bismuth dropped of the machine at my house a short while ago. First thing I noticed was that the recovery partition was still there but not accessible. The boot sector was deleted during installation of Windows Home Premium. I tried to recover the boot sector or just access the recovery partition but failed.

I'm busy now with a clean installation of Windows 7. Good part about it is that there won't be any HP bloatware on the machine. The bad part is that the person who installed Windows 7 Home Premium on the machine did not make recovery disks which would have made this problem much easier to solve.
Click to expand...

Yep, so now the next problem is to download all those pesky drivers.......
 
ponder said:
The fake problem you could probably fix with DAZ's Windows Loader.

For genuine MS ISO images browse here, http://forums.mydigitallife.info/forums/16-Windows-7 you will even find OEM iso images for specific brands.
Click to expand...

If you use a digital certificate and a matching OEM SLP key, then you can use a normal Windows 7 DVD to pre-activate the computer offline via the SLIC 2.1 marker in the BIOS. This is the method used by OEM's to activate Windows 7. They do not use the COA for activation. Therefore, there is no need for loaders or any other type of crack.

Further info is available here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn502540.aspx

SLMGR -ILC is for the certificate and SLMGR -IPK is for the key. These keys and certificates are OEM unique but not SKU unique.
 
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