HP and Microsoft follies

So, Saturday.

Started out by clearing the snow out of the driveway, after the dumping we got on Friday. Easy enough with the snow blower. For an encore, I fixed the lock on the garage door, so that we can keep the snow blower.

Enter girlfriend and her laptop. "I think I have a virus," she said as she handed it to me.

Upon boot-up: "Product information not valid. The following product information programmed into the system board is missing or invalid..."

Okay, hit enter to continue, get to the Windows 7 desktop. No more close-up picture of shaggy dog #1 - the desktop has gone black, with the message in the corner saying that the version of Windows isn't genuine. Crap.

Twenty minutes of diving through the Internet hive mind later, I have it sussed. HP pushed a BIOS update to the laptop, which somehow managed to wipe the product information. Since the Windows 7 check for genuine-ness depends on finding that product information, the laptop failed the check.

Basically, HP's sloppy pushed updates + Microsoft's consumer-hostile DRM = aggravation for me.

Anyhow, I fixed it. One of the great things about the Internet is that any problem you might have has most likely been had by at least a few other people, and if it's at all solvable, at least one of them has solved it and has talked about it somewhere online.

[Here's the how: There's a DOS utility from HP that can be used to re-write/re-generate the missing product information into the system board. Copy the utility onto a bootable USB key, change the boot-up sequence on the laptop to check the USB key first, re-boot the laptop from the key, run the utility. Provide all of the missing info (one piece of which is hidden on a sticker tucked into the laptop battery compartment). Exit, shut down, remove key, restart.]