Activating OEM Windows 7 with retail disc

Activating OEM Windows 7 with retail disc
---

Say you need to reinstall Windows 7 on a prebuilt machine (e.g. Dell, Lenovo, Asus, HP) and have lost the media or never received it.  This leaves you with downloading an official ISO image from Microsoft.  Windows 7 will not activate with the key because what is missing from the official disc is a set of certificates that match an embedded version within the system's mainboard BIOS.  As I painfully discovered doing reinstallations with OEM systems in the past few years and without 7 in the Action Pack catalog, I found this workaround.

If you have not formatted the original installation, this should be quick and easy, otherwise, see the very last step:

- Copy the contents of C:\Windows\System32\oem to a flash drive.  If Windows is unbootable, see if you can hook up the hard drive to another computer to access this folder.
- If the OEM key is not labeled on the computer, you can pull it using a freeware tool called Produkey (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html)
- Format and install Windows, you may have to skip the key entrance simply because it won't accept it.
- Copy the OEM files to the same location on the new Windows installation.
- Run these two commands:

	cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs -ilc %windir%\system32\oem\OEM.xrm-ms
	cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs -ipk KEYHE-REWIT-HDASH-ESOEM-11111

- You should now have activated Windows 7 or it will activate online in three clicks.
- If you have already formatted the hard drive and are trying to figure out how to activate Windows, you may have to seek those OEM certificates.  Sources for these vary and you must be careful not to download any EXE files because they are not executables.  You may have to contact the manufacturer and pay for shipping a new disc out.