alright, so i'm getting a blue screen that says: Windows 7 Build 7600 This copy of Windows is not genuine the problem here is that my copy of windows 7 pro is genuine. the only thing i did was use acronis to copy everything from one of two partitions from my old hhd to the entire space of my new hhd. it worked just fine for a few days. then my lazy self finally reformatted the old hhd, but when it finished restarting it came to a blue screen, no icons, and no start menu. this is a huge problem because i can't even get to my product key. the only thing i can do is ctrl+alt+del for task manager. I've tried starting various programs though it but nothing starts. i can't even use windows help without being charged.

You may have experienced a mixed installation, causing the new installation to use parts of the old. The easiest way to fix this is to run regedit (if you can do it directly from within Windows, this would be most convenient, if not, you would have to run it from the cmd prompt in the repair environment after booting from DVD and load the system hive from systemdrive:\windows\system32\config), navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices (or the appropriate subkey in the mounted dummy key) and rename the drive letter of the clone system volume to match the letter of the original installation, i.e. \DosDevices\E: to \DosDevices\C: - maybe you have to rename the key currently taking the proper drive letter as well). Best greetings from Germany Olaf

alright, well if i'm reading this right, then when i used acronis to clone one of two partitions from my old hhd to the entire space of the new hhd. the operating system on the new hhd was using components of the os on the old hhd. so then this is a major problem because the entire problem started when i reformatted the old hhd. which means the components the os on the new hhd is looking for no longer exists. so is there anyway to fix this problem without loosing the 700GB of information thats on my new hhd?

I'm guessing the system was booting from a partition on the other disk, and your present OS partition has no bootloader. You may be able to do a Startup Repair from the install DVD. You need a DVD to do this, which could be a problem if it's a DVD-less OEM copy. The other partition on the original disk was probably a recovery partition. This serves a function not unlike the Recovery Console on XP. In any event I would be inclined to make a copy of the data to another HD before attempting repairs.

Did you correct the drive letter of your system volume? This was all I had to do in a similar scenario on my laptop after replacing the Vista partition with the Windows 7 partition, making that bootable and later deleted the original Win7 partition. (And reactivate the Windows 7 installation on the same hardware platform.) Best greetings from Germany Olaf