Hi Folks,
I rebuilt my PC back in November, and ended up buying a new Windows 10 copy directly from the Microsoft Store. It shows up in my order history that I bought this less than 6 months ago. Unfortunately, I had a bad mobo and it died last week. I changed it out for the same model and got it running again.
Now, I can't reactivate Windows. When I go through the activation tool and hit "I had a recent hardware change," it still says it can't reactivate and to make sure I'm signed into the right Microsoft account. I am logged into the right Microsoft account. And when I log into my account on a browser, I can see both devices (with the exact same name and system details) as well as Windows 10 in my order history.
I already called Microsoft support once. They made me redo the same steps in the activator, then escalated me to Tier 2 in India. The Tier 2 support had me download a reinstall tool and told me that once the upgrade finished, I would have an activated version of Windows installed.
Surprise, that didn't work either. After sitting through the entire installation process, the error code has changed to "We can't activate Windows on this device as the previous version of Windows was not activated prior to upgrading to Windows 10 (0x803F7001).
There is literally no way I am paying another $200 for the exact same copy of windows on the exact same machine twice in six months. The last purchase is right there in my account history. Does anyone have experience with this or how to get it fixed?
I rebuilt my PC back in November, and ended up buying a new Windows 10 copy directly from the Microsoft Store. It shows up in my order history that I bought this less than 6 months ago. Unfortunately, I had a bad mobo and it died last week. I changed it out for the same model and got it running again.
Now, I can't reactivate Windows. When I go through the activation tool and hit "I had a recent hardware change," it still says it can't reactivate and to make sure I'm signed into the right Microsoft account. I am logged into the right Microsoft account. And when I log into my account on a browser, I can see both devices (with the exact same name and system details) as well as Windows 10 in my order history.
I already called Microsoft support once. They made me redo the same steps in the activator, then escalated me to Tier 2 in India. The Tier 2 support had me download a reinstall tool and told me that once the upgrade finished, I would have an activated version of Windows installed.
Surprise, that didn't work either. After sitting through the entire installation process, the error code has changed to "We can't activate Windows on this device as the previous version of Windows was not activated prior to upgrading to Windows 10 (0x803F7001).
There is literally no way I am paying another $200 for the exact same copy of windows on the exact same machine twice in six months. The last purchase is right there in my account history. Does anyone have experience with this or how to get it fixed?