Keep getting Office Not Genuine message after replacing pirated copyof Office 2007 Enterprise with l

[20vtguy]

Hi,
I am trying to resolve an issue one of my customers is having. Their
previous computer guy loaded what turned out to be a pirated copy of
Office 2007 Enterprise on one of their XP Pro computers. Thus recently
they have been getting alerts that the copy is not genuine. When they
told me that I explained the them that it was a pirated copy. I told
them we would need to buy a genuine copy. So we bought a couple of
full copies of Office 2007 Standard since he didn't need the all the
features of Enterprise edition anyway. We bought the second copy
because we figured we'd upgrade their other workstation which was
running a genuine copy of 2003 SB. On the machine with the genuine
copy of of 2003, I first uninstalled it and then and loaded 2007
Standard edition. Everything went fine and all is good with that
machine.

However, on the machine that had the pirated copy of Enterprise 2007
things did not go well. I uninstalled Enterprise, renamed the MS
Office folder to OLD and then went ahead and loaded the other legit
copy of 2007 Standard. But for some reason I am still getting the
notifications that Office is not genuine including that toolbar in
Outlook and such that states states that. I figured maybe it was
remnant left behind in the registry so I went into add-ins and found
the entry for the toolbar for genuine notification so I deleted it and
"the copy is not genuine" toolbar did go away so I thought all was
good but my customer tells me the notification toolbar has returned.
Why can't I get rid of that? Enterprise is no longer in there and the
copy of 2007 Standard is legit. Whats going on?

Thanks in advance,
Adam

 

[Earle Horton]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218

There is apparently something left from your original Enterprise
installation that is telling the Genuine Advantage thingy that things are
not genuine. You might try this method of removing everything, including
registry entries, before reinstalling your Standard product.

These schemes tend to annoy honest customers more than they deter real
pirates. (

Earle

 

[Peter Foldes]

Since a pirated version of Office Enterprise leaves some unwanted footmarks which
were inserted as to run undisturbed on a computer and when uninstalling or even
using the MS KB that Earle has supplied ,you will need to find these entries in the
Reg and delete them manually. The best way to go and make sure that you are clean
from this pirated version if to do a clean reformat.
If you are able to find these Reg lines that were inserted then you have no problems
.. If not then your only option is a clean reformat

 

[Earle Horton]

Yow! That's pretty harsh. I guess if you look at it from MSFT's
perspective that's what pirates deserve.

Earle