Thinkpads Forum

I have an X201 Tablet on which came the OEM preinstalled Windows 7 32-bit. I want to upgrade to 64-bit so that I can use more than the currently-installed 4GB of RAM.

I have used a "key finder" program to extract the Product Key of the OEM 32-bit OS. (The Windows COA sticker is illegible. Otherwise, I think all this would be easy. I tried calling Microsoft about this, they told me to call Lenovo.) I tried that key on a 64-bit installation and it would not activate.

Is it possible to update to 64-bit without the Windows COA sticker?

For the OEM key extracted from the original pre-installed windows 7 to work on the newely installed one, you need to also install the corresponding Lenovo certificate.


for the oem keys to activate you need:
1. a BIOS with windows 7 SLIC of Lenovo (which already exists since the laptop came with windows 7 preinstalled)
2. a Lenovo certificate (Certificate.xrm-ms)
3. a Lenovo OEM key

A set of OEM Windows 7 x64 recovery disks would do the trick as well.

I used the recovery partition from another Thinkpad to do this on my X201 Tablet. I just cloned the disk to a spare disk, swapped it with the X201's disk, hit F11 on boot up to go into recovery mode, and did a full recovery. Then I had to install some drivers and it was good to go. After I had a working Windows 7 64 bit system, I repartitioned the X201's disk, cloned the 64 bit system partition onto it and set it up to dual boot 32 and 64 bit Windows 7.

Do a fresh install from a retail or MSDN image of Windows 7 and use the key printed on the COA affixed to the machine.