I have had Windows 7 Pro installed on a Sony Vaio laptop since purchasing the machine about 5 - 6 years ago. It was installed as an upgrade from the original Win 7 Home supplied by Sony, using an upgrade pack purchased from Currys/PC World. This has evidently been 'genuine' for a number of years, but while installing Norton Security Deluxe yesterday the desktop background suddenly blacked out and I was informed that my Windows Installation Is Not Genuine...
On trying revalidation using the original Windows product it fails, leaving me with dire warnings about the consequences of using counterfeit software (which I am not) and suggesting purchasing a new 'Genuine' Windows (which I will not). However looking at the option of telephoning Windows Validation Support that sounds equally daunting as a number of people who have had similar difficulties previously talk of multiple lengthy calls, and baffled Microsoft technical staff.
If I run slui.exe in Admin mode it also fails, with an error code 0x8007000D.
It could be coincidence that this happened during the Norton installation but I doubt it. I've looked at Windows online support on this matter and it is not very helpful - most of it points to MS Fix It 50485 (ref MS KB article 2230957) which has now been 'retired' as Microsoft kindly informs us. There have been no hardware changes within the laptop at any time, and as far as I can remember, no validation issues whatsoever.
I've seen an earlier thread on this forum from 2015 discussing similar issues, but again MS Fix It 50485 seemed to be the favoured fix. Does anyone have a saved copy of the 50485 fix, or can anyone suggest how Norton might interfere with the validation process, and how this could be resolved?
The biggest immediate impact on me is that my work network won't talk to my laptop now that it thinks that the Windows installation isn't genuine!