Railworks America

I bought my pc from Ebay about a month ago, and today my Windows 7 Premium is gone. Turns out the seller (shady or not) gave me a product key that someone else has already used. I contacted the seller and he is sending me a new sealed program. My question though, can I still play Ralworks 2 without doing any damage until the new program gets here?

You need to re-format your HDD and do a fresh install. Installing a new copy of windows over an old one (even if it's the same IE Windows 7) is a no-no. Could/can cause alot of problems. Since your operating system is well a paper weight now, 95% sure you can't get any files out of your HDD or do anything.


A vital lesson to research sellers for anything and buy PC parts/ready built from stores.

Chessie8638 wrote:You need to re-format your HDD and do a fresh install. Installing a new copy of windows over an old one (even if it's the same IE Windows 7) is a no-no. Could/can cause alot of problems. Since your operating system is well a paper weight now, 95% sure you can't get any files out of your HDD or do anything.


A vital lesson to research sellers for anything and buy PC parts/ready built from stores.

If you are careful, you can enter the new WIN 7 CD Key on your existing install of Windows 7. Click on start, right click on Computer, select Properties, and at the bottom of the box in the 'Windows Activation' section it gives you the option to enter a new key. I ran into the same thing with a phony key, but after contacting Microsoft to buy a legal copy, I was able to just enter the new key and continue merrily along. Don't do anything at all with your applications until you get the new key, as sometimes the !PIRATE! !PIRATE! flags will stop you from saving files.

Thanks fellas, He said he will mail out the new packaged Wndows 7 on Monday so we'll see what happens.