For months I'd dealt with the (on-boot) message saying W7 wasn't authentic (it is). The notices were just something to be dismissed. (Esp. after trying slui 4 and various other methods of reminding W7 that is is authentic). W7 is better in many ways than XP -- but alas, after months of use it had become balky. So, quite some weeks ago, wipe the disk, a much needed re-partition, reinstall and voila! No "get authentic" pop-ups. After a re-boot (due to the bigger prob shown below), the "not authentic" message started again. The scene: Intranet via a plain Verizon Fios router: server running W2003, the aforementioned W7 wkstn. W7 never had trouble in WinExplorer of seeing the server's shares nor allowing me (admin user) to explore them. Until this AM. Both server and wksnt were on overnight. the wkstn had some text files open in Notepad -- and they remained open overnight. I'm not a wizard when it comes to getting Windows to recognize users without challenge: These text files were opened after inputting id&pw (yesterday). This AM I can't save the files -- W7 is asking for id&pw -- but anything I try is denied (eg Server\administrator, Server\user, Wkstn\user). Turns out I left VI6 open overnight too. The projects are on the server. Ok, how's that behaving? That has never challenged me on start, open of project, items etc. nor saving of same. Well that wants an ID&pw too. Even if i close it and restart all machines. what the fo? Now its getting stranger. As it turns out one my web-sites did not have anonymous access enabled in IIS on the server. When I load pages from that site in W7 -- it would challenge me and I'd provide ID&PW-- that was always ok --until this AM. Now it denies access. To be sure this isn't a server-side issue I tried the non-anonymous website from on the server. It challenged me -- and let me in with a server id&Pw _and_ a wkstn id&pw. But try that site from the workstation and I'm challenged but not able to provide an adequate ID&pw. (even though they are acceptable to the server browser.) If I go into Winexp on the server -- i can get to shared folders on W7 and open a text file via notepad without hassle. I run a workgroup for the intranet -- both machines are in the same workgroup and remain so. I've tried disabling my AV (bitdefender), no change. I'm hoping to avoid reinstalling the OS (on both machines?) Does anyone have any ideas about W7 is doing? Is there any way to repair it gracefully or should I kill an afternoon reinstalling the OS(s)? thanks. I look forward to some humor....

"rokosz2" wrote in message news:7e3fff8c-8688-4e75-8ae3-de3c4726601a... For months I'd dealt with the (on-boot) message saying W7 wasn't authentic (it is). The notices were just something to be dismissed. (Esp. after trying slui 4 and various other methods of reminding W7 that is is authentic). W7 is better in many ways than XP -- but alas, after months of use it had become balky. So, quite some weeks ago, wipe the disk, a much needed re-partition, reinstall and voila! No "get authentic" pop-ups. After a re-boot (due to the bigger prob shown below), the "not authentic" message started again. The scene: Intranet via a plain Verizon Fios router: server running W2003, the aforementioned W7 wkstn. W7 never had trouble in WinExplorer of seeing the server's shares nor allowing me (admin user) to explore them. Until this AM. Both server and wksnt were on overnight. the wkstn had some text files open in Notepad -- and they remained open overnight. I'm not a wizard when it comes to getting Windows to recognize users without challenge: These text files were opened after inputting id&pw (yesterday). This AM I can't save the files -- W7 is asking for id&pw -- but anything I try is denied (eg Server\administrator, Server\user, Wkstn\user). Turns out I left VI6 open overnight too. The projects are on the server. Ok, how's that behaving? That has never challenged me on start, open of project, items etc. nor saving of same. Well that wants an ID&pw too. Even if i close it and restart all machines. what the fo? Now its getting stranger. As it turns out one my web-sites did not have anonymous access enabled in IIS on the server. When I load pages from that site in W7 -- it would challenge me and I'd provide ID&PW-- that was always ok --until this AM. Now it denies access. To be sure this isn't a server-side issue I tried the non-anonymous website from on the server. It challenged me -- and let me in with a server id&Pw _and_ a wkstn id&pw. But try that site from the workstation and I'm challenged but not able to provide an adequate ID&pw. (even though they are acceptable to the server browser.) If I go into Winexp on the server -- i can get to shared folders on W7 and open a text file via notepad without hassle. I run a workgroup for the intranet -- both machines are in the same workgroup and remain so. I've tried disabling my AV (bitdefender), no change. I'm hoping to avoid reinstalling the OS (on both machines?) Does anyone have any ideas about W7 is doing? Is there any way to repair it gracefully or should I kill an afternoon reinstalling the OS(s)? thanks. I look forward to some humor.... To properly analyse and solve problems with Activation and Validation, we need to see a full copy of the report produced by the MGADiag tool (download and save to desktop - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012 ) Once saved, run the tool. Click on the Continue button, which will produce the report. To copy the report to your response, click on the Copy button in the tool (ignore any error messages at this point), and then paste (using either r-click/Paste, or Ctrl+V ) into your response. - **in your own thread**, please Please also state the Version and Edition of Windows quoted on your COA sticker (if you have one) on the case of your machine (or inside the battery compartment), but do NOT quote the Key on the sticker! http://www.microsoft.com/howtotell/content.aspx?pg=coa As far as your web and other access problems are concerned, this sounds like it could be malware-related - download and install Malwarebytes Anti-malware www.malwarebytes.org and update it, and run a full scan (DO NOT enable the Real-Time protection option!). Delete everything it finds. Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Hi, Thanks for your guidance. At this point I've resolved the issues by: deleting the boot partition, re-creating, formatting and re-installing Win7. Both issues are gone: Win (HPx64) isn't expecting authentication and I now have unfettered access to the shares and web-sites on the W23 server. Is it possible that W7 allows a certain number of days of "free" use before "authenticating"? I ask because I had just clean installed W7 some weeks ago -- not sure if it was "30 days" ago. Then, when attempting a new clean install I had some trouble resulting in the "new" install telling me immediately that I wasn't authentic -- I thought: at least its consistent. Immediately prior I'd tried 2x to do a clean install -- but it kept hanging (30-60 min) during "completing installation". At some point I found that there were 3 W7 installations (orig and 2 attempts). Hence my final, successful, attempt of clean install via del/recre/fomat the partition. Funny, I'd not considered malware yesterday - because I had Bitdefender installed -- shortly, I'll be confirming they provide mal protection too. thanks again, B

"rokosz2" wrote in message news:127615d3-89b2-42a9-92ef-8111982bc218... Funny, I'd not considered malware yesterday - because I had Bitdefender installed -- shortly, I'll be confirming they provide mal protection too. thanks again, B Please post an MGADiag report - it will allow us to check that the licensing is as it should be. If your machine came with Win7 pre-installed by a major manufacturer, then the OS should self-activate at every boot, using the OEM_SLP Key and licenses in the BIOS and the OS. If it's either an OEM System Builder or Retail license, then there is a 30-day activation Grace Period to allow the system to settle, before it must be activated. If the licensing breaks down for any reason, then the system will show as non-genuine. Reasons for such breakdown include overly aggressive security settings or software, malware, Registry 'cleaners' or 'optimisers', attempts to maximise speed without paying regard to OS requirements, and file corruption. Without a report, it's not often possible to tell the difference - and it can be difficult even with the report to pin down the exact nature of the problem. BitDefender is itself the cause of a non-genuine notification in some Vista systems :) (it may also become a problem in Win7 when RTM goes out-of-support) Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth