Dante just notified me about a problem that he encountered while trying to reinstall a Windows 7 Professional student version from Digital Rivers. The clean install went well until the product key of the operating system was requested. Windows 7 returned the message that the key that was entered was not valid even though it was the original key of the student edition.
Leaving the product key empty allowed him to continue with the installation but the activation from within the operating system returned another problem:
The following failure occurred while trying to use the product key: Code: 0xC004F061Description: The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not clean installations.
The solution was provided in a forum post at the official Microsoft support forum.
Basically install the OS without entering the license key. After full installation, click on [START] [RUN] and type in REGEDIT.
In regedit, browse to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/ and double click on “MediaBootInstall” on the right panel. Change the value from 1 to 0. Close regedit.Select [START] [All Programs] [Accessories] right click on [Command Prompt] and select [run as administrator]
Type the following in the command line window: “slmgr /rearm” and press enter. WAIT for the “Command completed successfully” dialog box to show up.
Now close the command line window and reboot.
Right click on [Computer] and select [Properties]. Select change product key and input your DigitalRiver’s license key. It’ll be activated than.
Hope this helps other Windows 7 users who have bought the student edition from Digital Rivers and encountered the product key error when trying to reinstall the operating system.
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If that didn’t work you could always try out WAT remover. http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/10895-RemoveWAT-A-safer-activation-solution. This is when everything you tried failed and Microsoft doesn’t want to help you.
This procedure didn’t work for me, my key was still not accepted.
AMAZING! Good work!