Bricked My Laptop!(sort of)

[ZenShredder]

Hello there, so before I begin here are some specs on the notebook/laptop, whatever you wish to call it.

Lenovo B560:

Windows 7 Home Premium
Intel Pentium P6200
Intel HD graphics(no idea what the on-board GPU is)
4GB DDR3 RAM(2GB stock, upgraded it to 4GB)
WD 320GB HDD



So what I decided to do to this laptop may seem really stupid, but honestly I just wanted to wipe the OEM installation of Windows 7 and start fresh because the Lenovo recovery system sucks, doesn't work, and is a waste of time. I essentially booted into Hiren's and wiped all of the partitions, even the recovery ones, consolidated them into a single partition and formatted the HDD so that I could just wipe everything away and start fresh. However, there has been a snag in the process thanks to the OEM recovery system being integrated into the hardware or possibly the firmware of the laptop.

After wiping and formatting the drive I decided to reinstall Windows on my laptop. It installed correctly, however the keys I used would not work. One is a Home Premium key which I own, and then the second is the OEM key which comes with it stock. Neither of these keys worked, I kept getting an error for the retail key stating that the key could not be used with this product which is a load of crap because I should be able to use it on whatever the hell I want. So I tried the OEM key and it gave a similar response basically saying the same thing. So I had the brilliant idea of wiping it, formatting it again, then installing on my desktop which I also coincidentally just reinstalled Windows on my new 250GB SSD. So I do all that, install Windows and installed a LAN driver so I could authenticate the Windows key online. Sure enough it worked perfectly on my desktop(which is a custom build I might add, no OEM nonsense!) so I shut down, pop it out of my desktop and back into my laptop. Finally I thought I could have some peace of mind, but then as soon as the laptop boots and starts Windows it blue screens right in the middle of the Windows logo animation!! Now I just want to throw out the laptop and crush it into tiny pieces because it's been a problem child ever since I bought it, but I'm hopeful that there is a not-so-lengthy solution to this problem.

If anything, this laptop is not super important to me, or my girlfriend for that matter, so doing just about anything at this point does not bother me. Should you suggest I snap it in half, I might just do it. But in all seriousness, this is a stupid problem caused by me being stupid, so any insight or help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[kookie3010]

Hello there, so before I begin here are some specs on the notebook/laptop, whatever you wish to call it.

Lenovo B560:

Windows 7 Home Premium
Intel Pentium P6200
Intel HD graphics(no idea what the on-board GPU is)
4GB DDR3 RAM(2GB stock, upgraded it to 4GB)
WD 320GB HDD



So what I decided to do to this laptop may seem really stupid, but honestly I just wanted to wipe the OEM installation of Windows 7 and start fresh because the Lenovo recovery system sucks, doesn't work, and is a waste of time. I essentially booted into Hiren's and wiped all of the partitions, even the recovery ones, consolidated them into a single partition and formatted the HDD so that I could just wipe everything away and start fresh. However, there has been a snag in the process thanks to the OEM recovery system being integrated into the hardware or possibly the firmware of the laptop.

After wiping and formatting the drive I decided to reinstall Windows on my laptop. It installed correctly, however the keys I used would not work. One is a Home Premium key which I own, and then the second is the OEM key which comes with it stock. Neither of these keys worked, I kept getting an error for the retail key stating that the key could not be used with this product which is a load of crap because I should be able to use it on whatever the hell I want. So I tried the OEM key and it gave a similar response basically saying the same thing. So I had the brilliant idea of wiping it, formatting it again, then installing on my desktop which I also coincidentally just reinstalled Windows on my new 250GB SSD. So I do all that, install Windows and installed a LAN driver so I could authenticate the Windows key online. Sure enough it worked perfectly on my desktop(which is a custom build I might add, no OEM nonsense!) so I shut down, pop it out of my desktop and back into my laptop. Finally I thought I could have some peace of mind, but then as soon as the laptop boots and starts Windows it blue screens right in the middle of the Windows logo animation!! Now I just want to throw out the laptop and crush it into tiny pieces because it's been a problem child ever since I bought it, but I'm hopeful that there is a not-so-lengthy solution to this problem.

If anything, this laptop is not super important to me, or my girlfriend for that matter, so doing just about anything at this point does not bother me. Should you suggest I snap it in half, I might just do it. But in all seriousness, this is a stupid problem caused by me being stupid, so any insight or help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

what is the error code?

 

[kawininjazx]

Windows 7 keys are fairly flexible, you can use OEM/retail/upgrade keys and on 32 or 64 bit, it just has to be the same version, like Home Premium. Did you try calling the activation phone number?

 

[aldan]

i would recommend trying the phone activation route as well,but you cant install windows on another machine and then swap the hdd to your laptop.the bluescreen is caused by either a driver or hardware conflict.windows has to be installed on the machine its used on.

 

[ZenShredder]

@ Kookie there's no error code, it's BSOD. I've yet to check the dump files, and honestly I've never done that before so I have no idea on how to go about doing it...

@Kawininjazx I have not tried using their phone activation method, perhaps I could try that but I fear that the same results will apply.

@Aldan I did not think doing a clean install and installing a generic LAN driver to activate would be an issue since it doesn't have any of the drivers from my MOBO or build in general working on it, but you are probably right. I just hope I can figure out a solution and hopefully get this resolved.



So my next question would be, what happens if the phone activation doesn't work? What then? Should I give Microsoft a call? Because my Lenovo is out of warranty so I don't plan on contacting them for anything outside of hardware issues not pertaining to this particular case unless Microsoft suggests it for some reason.

 

[aldan]

ive never had an activation refused yet,so no,you should have no problem.

 

[ZenShredder]

Hey guys, I forgot to mark this as solved! I finally got the activation key to work a while back. What I did is use a Windows 7 installer to format the drive before reinstalling it again, reinstalled and then it worked for some reason. Not sure why I had to do it that way, but that's what worked and now it's back to normal and much faster now thanks to it being a clean install. Thanks for your help guys, it is definitely appreciated!