Build 7601 Error when configuring Windows for Nigeria, Kenya

IT professionals who use an enterprise-wide license for Windows 7 will probably recognize the Build 7601 Error. It often presents itself to your users accompanied by a very intimidating black Desktop screen and a message (down in the corner near the Sys Tray) warning that the copy of Windows is not genuine. I felt bad for the end users who innocently logged in to their workstations and encountered this error; they invariably asked me whether Windows was going to lock their accounts – or possibly even self-destruct – because of it!

I encountered Build 7601 multiple times when I was configuring the Windows 7 computers for the Nigerian and Kenyan schools (see photograph). I had more than 10 computers to fully configure before each trip (nearly 20 for the Nigerian school), and I didn't boot up all 10-20 as soon as we took delivery in Georgia. Some of them were 30 days out of the warehouse before I booted them up, and when I got around to logging in to them, the Build 7601 error showed up. It's a consequence of waiting too long to use your OS license.

I've seen 3 to 4 different proposals for how to make Build 7601 go away, and this Blog entry today is my personal 2 cents' worth on that topic.

I've seen the proposal to uncheck “Read Only” in the Properties of C:\Windows\System 32, followed by rebooting and running the MGADiag.exe tool. My own experience: I had no luck with this, either in my work for the African schools or in my work for Unisys. It might be effective in some corporate environment other than the company I was working in, but I think any technician who is thinking of doing this will want to run the Command Line gpupdate command first, to overcome any permissions obstacles built into your company's image.

In my corporate environment, once I was given a valid corporate Product Key, I did have success once or twice with the Command Line commands slmgr -upk / slmgr -ipk. But of course, if you have a Product Key you can activate it by telephone.

For the schools, I had the advantage of a vendor-certified Product Key for each computer. Using a wi-fi connection from my cellphone, I could activate each item online. I used the Activate Online link in Control Panel > System > Windows Activation.