galinmcmahon wrote:
I've got what seems to be a fairly unique situation and it is driving me crazy. I just got a G74SX. It came with win7 ultimate which was (apparently) a business bulk upgrade. There is a win 7 home premium oem sticker too. I picked up a SSD which is blazing fast (went from 1:40 boot time to 0:24!) I tried doing a recovery onto the new SSD but got the blue screen with the note that windows 7 is not valid (or something to that effect.) I tried doing a disk image but it just hung on Setting Up Desktop. So I downloaded win7 ultimate off of a torrent site but now I can't activate it because my key is for premium and my ultimate key is an ID, not a key. I looked for a win7 premium oem edition (just learned that the oem key won't work on regular software) but no half reputable torrent site has it.

Hi there,
Please read my guide on how to properly install windows on ROG laptops - its a 'sticky' thread at the top of this sub-forum ( link in my sig as well ).

First you need to download an ISO image of windows 7 that inc premium / ultimate edition, then you need to edit its "ei.cfg" file to direct the install to install windows as retail & oem ( and the wanted edition) , this since your orig key was upgraded from a retail & oem key ( the key actually sits in your SLIC table inside the "bios" ).
please do NOT download windows ISO from unreliable sites such as p-irate-bay etc - there's far more reliable sits like THIS ONE. ( source: mydigitallife forums).

if you can still boot the old installion, you can extract the 'product key' from the bios if you want - even though you don't need ( MS servers already know to connect your HW with your product activation ) since the 1st time you connect to the internet ( if installed the properly by editing ei.cfg before intallation), windows will be activate automatically from MS servers and/or internal SLIC key.
For "how to extract key" please see my guide in the sticky thread.

now...if you want to have 'home premium' instead of 'ultimate' - you have couple of options:
IF YOU CAN BOOT TO OLD ULTIMATE INSTALLTION - there's a way to 'downgrade' current installation to 'home premium' using THIS METHOD.
IF YOU CAN'T - AFAIK, you must install ultimate again -> activate it -> perform the downgrade to 'home premium' -> stay with it or format & install 'home premium' from scratch.

now about activation issues after HW changes done to the PC - it might happen since activated is tied to HW in someway.
if MS online activation or offline activation ( based on SLIC in the BIOS ) failed - you might need to make a FREE call to MS, tell an automated machine some numbers, then you get in return some other set of numbers that will activate your windows.
personally, I made such activation at least 3-4 times, and no issues whatsoever.
SEE HERE HERE guides on how to do that.

lastly, you MUST have patience when dealing with OS installation.