A user working from home had trouble with Windows. His screen would go black with a message that “this copy of Windows is not genuine.” He remembered that the fix had something to do with VPN.
(The problem was that he was not on the BYU VPN, so Windows was not communicating with the licensing server.) Here was Mel’s reply:
The VPN software should be installed on your system already if we did this before. All you should have to do is execute it and then wait a few minutes until Windows gets re-authenticated. To do this, find the VPN software in your program list under the All Programs folder of the START menu (lower left corner). Look for Cisco Anywhere and run the executable. If you choose the right one, it will show a screen asking you to authenticate with your netid credentials. Of course, you must be connected to the internet for this to work. Assuming you do this correctly, an icon should appear in the system tray (lower left bottom of the screen that looks like a world with a locked lock on it). This puts your system on the BYU network and it should see the licensing server that updates Windows copies. I’d leave the system connected and wait an hour or so, then check to see if it updates, which it should automatically. I’m assuming you still have windows 7, so click the START menu, then right mouse click THIS COMPUTER, then select PROPERTIES. Scroll down to the bottom of the dialog box that opens and check the Windows Activation section. If it worked, it should say “Windows is activated.”