I had to “repair” Windows when I moved my hard disk to a new computer, and through a series of mishaps that are no longer important, I gave it a product key that made it unhappy. Now Windows warns me that I am running a pirated copy every time I boot, and at intervals while I work.
I’ve got a valid product key to enter, but I can’t find a way to make Windows accept it. I don’t want to do another repair because I consider it a dangerous measure, to be avoided unless something is really broken.
I found a variety of web sites that describe essentially the same procedure for entering a new product key, which involves clearing a couple of entries in the registry, then running the registration program. It doesn’t work. The program does nothing, and when I look at the registry, the entries I cleared are back.
Has anyone done this successfully? What’s the trick?
