Hey!
I got "new" used laptop with Win8.1 license on it (actually the product key is in BIOS, but well..) and would like to downgrade to Win7. Several official MS sources said the right procedure to do so is to install Win7, activate by phone and say to the representative that I'm downgrading and they are supposed to supply me with one-time confirmation ID for the activation dialog.
I did just that and we got nowhere - the lady told me my activation ID is invalid and that I should activate online, which doesn't work.

Anyone got better experience with this?
I can't seem to find how to do it anywhere on the net.

Interestingly they haven't commented on how I obtained the product key - apparently hacking SLIC is pretty normal for regular Windows users

 

OK, got some more info, which is even stranger.
Supposedly I should use any foreign Win7 Pro key found on any other laptop and then use phone activation.

EDIT: It worked!

 

Last edited: Sep 3, 2018

You want to go legit and get more headache than any warez
Glad you managed to work it out, mate!

 

you should also keep a backup of the key they gave you
cause it will always be the same key to unlock your laptop
if you ever need to reinstall win 7 again.

 

Only if everything was kept as it is (eg. partition size, alignment, amount of RAM, CPU, etc.)

Better solution might be to clean install W7, ask for the key again and then make a backup of that partition. Activated system doesn't care about changing components that much.

 

Im not sure if it realy matters if the partition size, alignment, amount of ram or if the cpu is changed
that the same key will not work again ,the robot girl never said anything about this ?
Maybe we should test it one day if we ever get the chance