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so, a little background, I have been having some issues with my laptop running really slow yesterday. After much diagnosing, it seems that AVG seems to have been the culprit. The laptop seems to be running smoothly now. AVG seems to have resolved its issues. One of the odd things that I notices is that now I have a message on the bottom right of my desktop that states:

Windows7
build 7601
This copy of windows is not genuine.

This is an ASUS laptop which I have had for about 2.5 years and has the original factory installed copy of the OS installed.
The only changes to the system that I made while trying to diagnose the issues I mentioned include. running a system restore which was created by a windows update and deleting my video drivers and then intalled the drivers from the windows update site.

anyone got any Ideas as to what happened????

On a side note: I seem to have lost the windows sticker that has the product key from the bottom of my laptop.
I won't ask what else cn go wrong ... cause I just don't wanna know lol

First and foremost, you'll need to know what your product key is. Then, if you right-click "My Computer" => Properties => Scroll down to "Windows Activation" there should ba a blue link to "activate windows online."

If that doesn't work, I would say call Windows Tech Support. Sometimes their tech support can be helpful and sometimes they can be a royal P.I.T.A so if that doesn't work, stop back here for more options.

I'm no expert on the byzantine catacombs of Windows activation, but I suspect that you just need to have windows check its validity, as it sometimes wants to do. You said you rolled back some updates via Restore, and so Windows probably thinks it needs to check in with the mothership (and thinks it hasn't done so since before the restore point, which is probably "too long" ago). I'd suggest running Windows Update manually and see what it queues up in terms of things it wants to install. Likely one of those will be the "genuine" check that shows up with updates periodically, and running that will put you back in the good graces of Windows activation. You should probably think about installing some of the other updates as well, at least the ones that are security-related. (I know updates seem to have been the cause of your recent problems, but you don't want an unpatched machine).

In the worst case, you have an OEM laptop so it's not like the nice people at Microsoft India (or wherever they're doing phone activation these days) will think you're a pirate if it comes to that.

Aside: there are tools (such as SIW and various others you can find if you google with the obvious keywords) that can extract and decrypt the activation code for your copy of Windows; it's always a good idea to make a copy of that somewhere in case a reinstall becomes necessary (perhaps you'll want to write it on a piece of tape and stick it on your laptop).

Thanks for the replies, everything seems to be working correctly now. I did not think that a restore point would trigger that type of response, especially from only 2 weeks ago but I guess it did. Thanks for the links also .. save for future ref.

MechWarrior wrote:

Thanks for the replies, everything seems to be working correctly now. I did not think that a restore point would trigger that type of response, especially from only 2 weeks ago but I guess it did. Thanks for the links also .. save for future ref.

Sorry to dredge up a month-old thread, but I wish the original poster would have said what he did, if anything. All he says is "everything seems to be working correctly now", without any further information.

Did he attempt to reauthorize? Call Microsoft? Wish upon a star? Please let us know so that we will know for "future ref".