I recently purchased a used computer at a very low price. On it was an installation of Windows 7. All seemed to be fine. I cleared out all the old junk, cookies, registry etc. Now I get a window error saying the computer can not verify my copy of Windows Enterprise and I should check with my IT department. I am a single home user with Win7 Home Premium on my other pc. I spoke with a local computer store and they said it sounds like the previous owner put a "bootleg" copy of Win7 Enterprise on the hard drive. Can I downgrade the Illegal Enterprise edition to my legitimate copy of Win7 Home Premium Upgrade without losing all the programs and stuff I spent the last week installing on the new used pc?

On Fri, 21 Jan 2011 20:50:30 +0000, SSGTTommy wrote: I recently purchased a used computer at a very low price. On it was an installation of Windows 7. All seemed to be fine. I cleared out all the old junk, cookies, registry etc. Now I get a window error saying the computer can not verify my copy of Windows Enterprise and I should check with my IT department. I am a single home user with Win7 Home Premium on my other pc. I spoke with a local computer store and they said it sounds like the previous owner put a "bootleg" copy of Win7 Enterprise on the hard drive. Can I downgrade the Illegal Enterprise edition to my legitimate copy of Win7 Home Premium Upgrade without losing all the programs and stuff I spent the last week installing on the new used pc? If I acquired a used computer, no matter who previously owned it, the first thing I would do with it would be to reinstall the operating system cleanly. You have no idea how the computer has been maintained, what has been installed incorrectly, what is missing, what viruses and spyware there may be, etc. I wouldn't want to live with somebody else's mistakes and problems, possibility of kiddy p0rn, etc., and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else do so either. You're playing with fire if you don't reinstall Windows cleanly. Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

Thats great advice and I will heed that. Quick question though, since my legitimate copy of Windows 7 HP is an upgrade type, after I clean the hard drive wont I have to reinstall previous copies of windows before I can install my upgrade? Furthermore, since my Vista (os that I upgraded to on my legit pc) will I have to go all the way back to XP and download service packs and then upgrade to vista and then upgrade again to Win7 HP?

On Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:09:17 +0000, SSGTTommy wrote: Thats great advice and I will heed that. Great, glad to hear that. Quick question though, since my legitimate copy of Windows 7 HP is an upgrade type, after I clean the hard drive wont I have to reinstall previous copies of windows before I can install my upgrade? Furthermore, since my Vista (os that I upgraded to on my legit pc) will I have to go all the way back to XP and download service packs and then upgrade to vista and then upgrade again to Win7 HP? No, no. You have perhaps misunderstood what I advised. You should do a clean installation of Windows, not an upgrade. And I'm not sure what you mean by "after I clean the hard drive," but no cleaning of the hard drive is necessary. However, you can do a clean installation with an Upgrade copy if you have a qualifying previous version installed. All you need to do is clean install XP without downloading any service packs (when you follow the prompts for a clean installation, it will begin by formatting the drive for you), then run your Upgrade version of Windows 7. Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP