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On my son's laptop bottom right hand corner it says

"Windows 7
Build 7600
This copy of Windows is not genuine"

We bought it new from PCWorld, but it has had the hard drive replaced. What should we do?

Thanks in advance

was it showing this before the laptop went into pc world if not i would go back and ask them as to why its not genuine

Type in "Activate Windows" in the Windows search menu` bottom left, then On the side of the case there should be a activation code 26 digit.. just use that to activate .. takes a couple of days or so to go through,

Am guessing, the op, bought a laptop from pc world, has had some problem with it later on, where by he had to change harddrive.

(And the mistake he made was not making a set of recovery discs )

The way round it is if you still have product key on bottom of your laptop, then you could borrow a win7 disc from someone, as you will be using your own key code.

I personally would not accept a copy from anyone, only use a genuine win7 disc.

There will be no doubt a few will pop up and say I have a disc you can borrow, a legit one,,, but when you go collect it, you get told its a copy of a genuine disc.

Stick to genuine, you know what your putting on your laptop then.

What's happened is Windows 7 has detected a hardware change because you put a new hard drive in. They tightened security after windows XP to stop the same activation code being used on more than one computer. Windows 7 will de-activate if it detects any internal components changed such as hard drives and video cards etc. You could download a legitimate copy of windows 7 off Microsofts partner Digital River, and burn it to a blank DVD and install a CLEAN copy of Windows 7 and start again, then activate the copy and install the drivers for your laptop off the manufacturer of your laptops website.

This is the first time I've seen this, but talking to my son. The hard drive is split in to two partitions. The 'C' drive was full so he moved some files onto the 'D' drive, including some windows files (idiot ). Do we need to format and re-install windows?

Before you do anything else, back up your data to an external device/DVD.

Then, provided your son knows which files he moved and where from, try moving back the Windows files.

if unsure contact The Dr for advice

If you can try system restore to a point before he moved the files it might just put it right.

That would work too.
Up to the point that if its a "branded" laptop you would loose some of there qwerky programs that no one uses and widgets.

Just Don't let him think the key on the laptop is a scratch card lol