My brother's almost 3 year-old Lenovo laptop (originally pre-installed with Win 7 Home Premium) was running slowly, so I wanted to do a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium on a new SSD. I checked the sticker, and it had been almost completely
faded/wiped off. It was illegible, so I ran Belarc Advisor and made a note of the Windows key contained therein. I used that code when reinstalling Win 7 Home Premium from my own non-branded OEM disc, but it came up as Not Genuine. I then realized that the
code obtained through Belarc Advisor wasn't the same as the label underneath the laptop, but instead would have been a generic Lenovo-exclusive OEM code installed on all of their computers by their OEM Windows installation disc which, of course, my brother
misplaced long ago.
Is there any way to obtain a new sticker with a valid OEM keycode, or do we have to shell out for a new copy of Windows 7?