I ran Windows Repair last night on a Windows 7 machine, because I've been having some major issues with home networking (can't activate network discovery or any sharing options) on that PC, and I'd read that this program could help with firewall policy problems. I left most of the default file permissions and services-related options checked, and let the program run. After it ran and my system rebooted, I'm getting messages that my installation of Windows is not genuine (it is a genuine OEM installation that came on the machine in question, a Lenovo laptop).
On top of that, I can't open any files created by my user account - Windows alerts me that I do not have permission to access them. I activated the hidden administrator account and it can't access the files either. Any files created by my user account (which has admin permissions) are invisible when the hard drive is attached to another computer (even when show hidden files/show system files are enabled). I was suspicious at first that there was some kind of malware issue going on, but I had ran malwarebytes before running Windows Repair, and Windows Repair itself seems to be well-regarded.
I found this article from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2008385 which addresses the problem about the incorrect genuine Windows validation error. The fact that it describes a security issue would presumably explain why my administrator accounts cannot access my files. It suggests adding certain registry keys in order to repair the issue. I have already tried that - Windows informed me that the .reg file was used to update the registry - but that hasn't solved anything. I am unable to run rsop.msc in order to attempt the other solutions suggested.
I did set a restore point and back up my registry via Windows Repair before running the repair process. However, I am not currently able to run Windows Repair, even from a portable version on a USB drive.
Does anyone know how Windows Repair could have screwed up my system like this, and what I can do to fix it?
At the least, I really just want access to my files so that I can back them up. If I can get all the files created by my primary user account off the machine, I'm comfortable doing a factory restore in Windows, or formatting and installing, or whatever's necessary to fix the OS.