Make “Pirated” Windows 7 RTM Genuine
Provided that Windows was genuine in the first place

Pirated copies of Windows 7 RTM can be turned fully genuine, according to Microsoft, but only if the platform was genuine to begin with. The Redmond company has documented two workarounds designed to allow customers to save their copy of Windows, provided that Windows 7 managed to go rogue. According to the software giant, users of the latest iteration of the Windows client have reported that immediately after log on, they were presented with a Windows Activation window featuring the following message: “Windows is not genuine. Your computer might not be running a counterfeit copy of Windows. 0x80070005.”

On a small side note, this has actually happened to me on a Release Candidate build of Windows 7 Ultimate downloaded from my MSDN account and activated with one of the product keys from Microsoft. In this regard, I can confirm the symptoms enumerated by Microsoft, including “the computer desktop background is black, and you receive the following error message on the bottom right corner of the screen: “This copy of Windows is not genuine.” You receive the following error message when you view the System Properties: (Control Panel / System and Security / System): “You must activate today. Activate Windows now.” If you try to use slmgr.vbs /dlv to view the licensing status, you receive the following message: Error: 0x80070005 Access denied: the requested action requires elevated privileges.”

The Redmond company is well aware of the problem and even documented it on Microsoft Support. However, in my case, Windows 7 we