Win 10 Not Reactivating After Hardware Swap

[MisterGoldfish]

I upgraded ,my motherboard my cpu and my gpu and afterwards booted up my pc to see windows is no longer genuine it directed me to go into the store to make it genuine and when I click the button it says your device will be genuine shorty and loads infinitely how do I fix this?

 

[yoji]

strictky speaking.. you have changed MOBO.. so its no longer the same PC and so your Win 10 license (if part of free upgrade.. or OEM) is no longer valid and you need buy a license.
If your WIn 10 is retail - then you should call MS.. if it was a free upgrade from retail.. you should reinstall your original OS and then get the free upgrade again.
Hope that makes sense
Good luck

 

[Outlander_04]

strictky speaking.. you have changed MOBO.. so its no longer the same PC and so your Win 10 license (if part of free upgrade.. or OEM) is no longer valid and you need buy a license.
If your WIn 10 is retail - then you should call MS.. if it was a free upgrade from retail.. you should reinstall your original OS and then get the free upgrade again.
Hope that makes sense
Good luck

This was true of windows 7 but not of Win 8 and 10.

The activation has 30 days to complete . Dont worry about it

 

[yoji]

This was true of windows 7 but not of Win 8 and 10.

The activation has 30 days to complete . Dont worry about it

Can you elaborate please? in what way is it different?
Thanks.

 

[Outlander_04]

This was true of windows 7 but not of Win 8 and 10.

The activation has 30 days to complete . Dont worry about it

Can you elaborate please? in what way is it different?
Thanks.

Windows licensing conditions changed after win 7 .
There is no oem and retail version of Win 8
There is a 'home user license" which allows you to swap it from mb to mb , so long as it is not on both at the same time

 

[yoji]

Windows licensing conditions changed after win 7 .
There is no oem and retail version of Win 8
There is a 'home user license" which allows you to swap it from mb to mb , so long as it is not on both at the same time

Thanks.. I am not convinced your advice will hold.. changing MOBO is usually what breaks the link with the activation process, even for WIN 10.
This article seems to explain and confirm that the OP may well have to contact MS..

http://www.howtogeek.com/226510/how-to-use-your-free-windows-10-license-after-changing-your-pc%E2%80%99s-hardware/

Thanks for your reply - I am more aware now

 

[Outlander_04]

Yes there is confusion with windows 10.

If I was the OP I would wait a few days and reboot a few times to see if there is activation . Then if that doesnt happen a call to MS

 

[ZurichPC]

I recently swapped out a defective MOBO and ran into the same "Windows not genuine" message with Win 7. The Product Key is actually stored in the PC registry, but in binary. To view it, just copy/paste this script into Notepad and save it as "ProductKey.vbs" onto your desktop.

Double click the new file icon (it looks like a S-shaped script) and a little pop-up window will appear displaying your Product Key. Enter the key data into the Windows Activation window, click [Next} and that should do it. Your existing version of WIn 7 will then be activated and the annoying message in the lower right of the screen will go away.

Original source - https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox ConvertToKey(WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId"))

Function ConvertToKey(Key)
Const KeyOffset = 52
i = 28
Chars = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"
Do
Cur = 0
x = 14
Do
Cur = Cur * 256
Cur = Key(x + KeyOffset) + Cur
Key(x + KeyOffset) = (Cur \ 24) And 255
Cur = Cur Mod 24
x = x -1
Loop While x >= 0
i = i -1
KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput
If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i <> -1) Then
i = i -1
KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput
End If
Loop While i >= 0
ConvertToKey = KeyOutput
End Function

 

[USAFRet]

I recently swapped out a defective MOBO and ran into the same "Windows not genuine" message with Win 7.

1. This post related to Win 10, not Win 7.
2. This post is several years old. The WIn 10 licensing ecosystem has changed since then.
3. Given a valid Win 7 license, you did not need to go through all that.
4. Please don't dredge up old irrelevant threads.