I do apologise, I was being flippant in my last reply. My frustration got the better of me.
I will be buying a 'legit' copy in due course, and as you quite rightly point out it will save problems in the future.
There is absolutely no need to apologise! In fact it is I who should apologise to you, for presuming to lecture you about piracy. Let me therefore clarify:
1. I do not give a *censored* about loss of revenue to Microsoft. I would be a hypocrite to say that I did, but I am not going to tell you why!
2. This site has a "no help with piracy" policy, probably for practical reasons (not good to have a takedown letter from a software company's lawyers) as much as for moral reasons, although some on here are very strongly in the "piracy is theft" camp.
3. I should have restricted myself to remarking about the practical consequences to the user of using pirated Microsoft OS: lack of access to support and updates, danger of activation problems, possibilty of malware infection on downloaded versions, etc.
So good luck with your computer problems, and I hope we will be able to help you with them.