My computer is telling me that my WIndows is not genuine and offers me to by genuine version for $149.00 What the hell is this? How come its not genuine all the sudden? What should I do? Thanks

M$ is aggresively pursuing piracy and what you are seeing is that in implementation - pay the $149.00 and get legit! The Secret Letter From Iraq

So I should ignore the message? When I tried to install Explorer 7 it would not do so untill I install Genuine. What should I do in this case? Thanks

Even with WGA workarounds it will still ask individually for Authenticity for IE7, Defender etcetc, Just go legit or save up for Vista !

If you have a legit Windows CD and Product Key, what sometimes happens is someone has been found to be using the same product key as you fruadulantly, Microsoft knows about that and will consider anyone using that key is using it fruadulantly. If you are sure your CD and product key are legit (there are a lot of fake ones being sold apparently), you can contact Microsoft and get a new product key assigned to you, as long as you have adequate proof that your copy is legitimate (e.g. the proper validation sticker). More info: www.howtotell.com If your CD or it's product key is NOT legitimate, if you don't mind using XP Home SP2, you can save some money by getting an OEM full version XP Home SP2 CD for about $100 that can only be bought at the same time as a qualifying hardware purchase - a stick of ram or a hard drive or maybe a mouse will do. OEM Windows CD's can be bought at many local smaller places that custom build computers and have a good supply of computer parts, or on the web.

XP came with the computer when I bought it brand new, but It did not come with XP CD. Last year I had to drop it off to be fixed. I guess those guys installed something that was not legit. Sometimes when I turn the computer it asks me that windows can not read [][][][][][] (sqwares) file, please enter right name- or something like this.

Sorry about that - I don't use a brand name system (and never will) so I tend to forget many people have them. You can still contact Microsoft and get them to give you a new product key - you should have no trouble with that, but tell them it is a brand name system. Brand name system computers do not come with a Windows CD, unless you can order it separately for a small extra fee when you buy the computer, or when you order the computer custom built (e.g. for HP and Compaq in the USA). Still, your Windows is there, probably both already installed on your C drive, and in any case on your Recovery partition, and the product key was already there when you bought the computer, and Windows was already Activated. As long as you can get into Windows you can use Toshiba supplied utilities to make a Recovery CD set for your computer, which you are supposed to do not long after you get your computer while it is still running fine, or use other Toshiba supplied utilities to repair your software without having to re-install everything. One thing you could try - go on the web and search for a utility called Keyfinder , by Jellybean software, or similar. Download it and execute it - the Windows Product Key it finds should be the same as the one on the label on the notebook case - that's probably on the bottom of the notebook - on the Microsoft validation sticker. If the Windows Product Key found by Keyfinder is different, those who worked on your computer changed it. If that's the case, you can change the Product Key with the Keyfinder utility to the one on the notebook label.