Activate windows watermark??

[Mercy_1]

Everything worked completely fine before. Something went wrong with my desktop computer and I couldn't turn it on anymore so I gave it to a company to fix it, which they did. After I got it back I've had this "Activate windows" watermark on the bottom of my screen. It says "go to settings to activate windows". If I go and try to do that I get this:

"We can't activate windows on this device as the previous windows was not activated prior to upgrading windows 10. Go to the store and buy genuine windows. Error code: 0x803F7001"

I got my desktop computer in 2015 and bought and installed windows 8, then later upgraded to windows 10 (it was a free upgrade at the time). I don't know what's happened but I'd like to be able to activate windows so I can personalise some things.

 

[bignastyid]

Have you tried activating it with your win 8 key?

 

[Mercy_1]

Have you tried activating it with your win 8 key?

My win 8 key? Guessing i'm supposed to find that with the windows 8 CD I bought in 2015. If so then I have no idea where I can find that :/ If it's not in my computer system somewhere then i'm afraid it's lost.

 

[bignastyid]

In Win 10 did you tie the key to your Microsoft account?

 

[Mercy_1]

In Win 10 did you tie the key to your Microsoft account?

Pretty sure I didn't, no.

 

[bignastyid]

Whatever they did to the system windows is seeing it as a new system which is why it deactivated. Without the liscense being tied to your account the only other option is the Win 8 key. Without that then your only option is to buy a new liscense/key.

 

[Mercy_1]

Whatever they did to the system windows is seeing it as a new system which is why it deactivated. Without the liscense being tied to your account the only other option is the Win 8 key. Without that then your only option is to buy a new liscense/key.

Aw, alright. If I were to buy a new liscense key to windows 10 would that reset anything on my system? Thanks for the help so far by the way

 

[BFG-9000]

If they had to change the motherboard then Windows 10 will deactivate for sure. If you ever signed in to Windows 10 with a Hotmail or other Microsoft account then it may be possible to transfer the activation to the new hardware.

The free upgrade still works if you find the old Win 8 key but you obviously lose everything if you clean reinstall 8. Otherwise a new 10 key will just reactivate it without changing anything. You can actually keep using 10 unactivated and only little things like the wallpaper don't work.

 

[bignastyid]

Activating with a new key is non destructive.

 

[VJ_Gamer]

You could try calling Microsoft Support once before buying new license. Last try

Peace.

 

[Mercy_1]

If they had to change the motherboard then Windows 10 will deactivate for sure. If you ever signed in to Windows 10 with a Hotmail or other Microsoft account then it may be possible to transfer the activation to the new hardware.

The free upgrade still works if you find the old Win 8 key but you obviously lose everything if you clean reinstall 8. Otherwise a new 10 key will just reactivate it without changing anything. You can actually keep using 10 unactivated and only little things like the wallpaper don't work.

Yes, the motherboard was changed. So all I need to do now is just go and buy a windows 10 key and nothing will be lost? Also, I can use a wallpaper, the only thing that's annoying me is the watermark and the fact that I can't change the color of my taskbar and other things.

 

[BFG-9000]

No settings are changed by just entering a new key.

The personalizations like the Background Picture are indeed disabled without activation but the ridiculously easy workaround is to rightclick on the image itself and "Set as desktop background." The workaround for the taskbar color at least for previous builds was:

regedit
navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize
double-click ColorPrevalence in the right panel, and change the Value Data field to 1
go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
double-click AutoColorization in the right panel, and change the Value Data field to 1.
restart

There are utilities that pull the CD-Key out of the registry but your Win 8 key may have been replaced in there by the generic Win 10 key in there which is good for nothing as it's the same key as everyone else has. And again, you would lose everything by reinstalling 8. But it may help you plead your case to Microsoft for a free new key, if your Win 8 was a Retail version.