Win 10 Home Premium won't activate

[HankB]

Short story, upgraded spinning rust on a Lenovo G750 from Win7 to Win10 Home Premium and it is activated. (Yay! That took about a day surprisingly... But that's another story.) Swapped in a 240GB SSD and installed Win10 from a CD - a clean install. No activation. It tells me the product key is blocked.

Is there a way to resolve this?

The details...

SWMBO was happily cruising along on her Lenovo G750. Most of her needs are met with a web browser and the Garmin Ant downloader. Her laptop drives me nuts. If I need to use it for something, it takes about 30 seconds to switch users and that doesn't count the time lag after logging in before the desktop appears. I've totally spoiled myself by using SSDs on my PCs.

Along comes Win10 and I participated in the preview. As a result I now have fully activated Win 10 Pro in a VM on my desktop and dial boot on my laptop. (Thank you Microsoft.) I decided that Win10 on an SSD would be a nice upgrade for Wife's PC. I put the SSD in and installed 9266 TP. But MS had already closed the door on that one. My other installs had already upgraded to RTM but this one sat there like a turd. And it nagged about activation. I told SWMBO to be cool that the official release would be available in a week and I could install the release at that time.

On the 29th I installed the official download and waited for activation. No activation.

I did some research and read that I could create rescue media on the original drive and migrate to the new drive (Win7) I did that. IIRC it took a couple hours top prepare the USB stick When I booted it, after a period of meditation it told me the drive wasn't big enough. (240GB.) I thought that maybe prior partitioning on it might be the issue so I fired up a Linux Rescue CD and deleted the partition table. Still no dice. Is it possible that it is complaining that it cannot restore because the new drive is smaller? I had actually shrunk down the original drive to under 120 GB. Frustration sets in.

I installed Linux Mint 17. Took 20 minutes. That was a breath of fresh air after literally working days trying to get the Win 10 upgrade on the SSD. Wife seems OK with Mint. She's been using Chrome anyway. I found a python script that would import files from her Forerunner 410 and showed her how to upload them manually.

I do not give up easily. Not always a useful trait.

After reading assurances here in one of the Win 10 threads that I needed to first upgrade to Win10 from 7.0, activate and then replace the drive and perform a clean install. I put the HD back in and waited patiently as it booted. . . . . . (Did I say I've been spoiled by SSDs ) It took me a couple hours to get the Win10 upgrade kicked off. I kept going back and forth on some issue with the upgrade checker insisting I install a hot fix and Win7 insisting that the hot fix was already installed. (Later my son - my Windows expert - told me that that particular hotfix has had 12 or 13 updates and I probably just needed to uninstall/reinstall it. Hotfixes in hotfixes!) I finally found a link to an upgrade app and kicked that off. About 4 hours (and many reboots) later the spinning rust was spinning Win 10. Yay! After using that a couple days I pulled the HD ad put the SSD back in. I used a Linux Rescue CD to resize the Linux partition and split the space between Linux and Windows, leaving the intended Windows partition unallocated. Next I booted the install CD, selected the advanced option and told it to install. It's up and running now. Linux is no longer bootable, but that is expected. Win 10 boots, runs, updates and gently reminds me to activate. It has done so for days now. Going to the activation screen reveals the following error:



I thought that I might download Win7 install media and install that on the SSD, activate using the sticker on the back and then upgrade but MS has that pretty well locked down. Thee tell me the activation key is an OEM and I should contact them. I just spent a half an hour searching the Lenovo site for a way to download install media and found none.

Any suggestions on how to activate are most welcome!

thanks,
hank

Edit... I put the HD back in and now I'm searching for a way to create recovery media. I can find none.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I can't see why that will occur. That message is supposed to mean that Microsoft blacklisted the product key, because of it being leaked. (like XP VLKs)

 

[HankB]

I can't see why that will occur. That message is supposed to mean that Microsoft blacklisted the product key, because of it being leaked. (like XP VLKs)

When I had the preview installed I tried activating with a key I found on the Internet as well as phone activation. I wonder if that caused a bad key to be associated with this PC.

 

[HankB]

I'm on the phone with MS support. Apparently the problem is that I upgraded, activated and then swapped the HD. Activation depends on more than just the motherboard.

To activate on a new drive, I need to install Win7 on the new drive, authenticate using the sticker on the bottom of the laptop and then upgrade to Win10.

I'm waiting on the phone to talk to someone who can help me get install media. I can't download it directly because I have an OEM product key.

I suppose the upshot of this is that for anyone who upgrades to Win10, if your hard drive ever craps out or you decide to upgrade later, you need to go back to your previous version of Windows and install that and then upgrade. Better do it within a year while the offer still stands.

 

[HankB]

Is there a way to resolve this?

Yes.

I do not give up easily. Not always a useful trait.

I just gave up. Time to cut my losses and install Linux Mint. The "free" upgrade (or the hassle of migrating W7 to a new drive) just is not worth the trouble.

Too bad I didn't install the preview on her lappy before the door closed on that. I've got Win10 Pro on two VMs and my laptop as a result of participation.

 

[dyckah]

I'm on the phone with MS support. Apparently the problem is that I upgraded, activated and then swapped the HD. Activation depends on more than just the motherboard.

To activate on a new drive, I need to install Win7 on the new drive, authenticate using the sticker on the bottom of the laptop and then upgrade to Win10.

well thats a pain in the a#*.
should be able to swap hdd's and do a fresh install, like wtf microsoft!

 

[mimart7]

I'm not sure if this will work for W10 but it does work for W7, run slmgr /ato from elevated command prompt. At work we sometimes have problems with machines that have been imaged, activating, and this resolves the issue.

 

[HankB]

I'm not sure if this will work for W10 but it does work for W7, run slmgr /ato from elevated command prompt. At work we sometimes have problems with machines that have been imaged, activating, and this resolves the issue.

Thanks for the tip. No joy - same error.

 

[mimart7]

Thanks for the tip. No joy - same error.

Try this, slmgr.vbs /ato. It may take several tries. I got this from here, http://www.bidnessetc.com/business/...ivation-issues-after-microsoft-windows-10-cl/

 

[HankB]

Try this, slmgr.vbs /ato. It may take several tries. ...l/[/url]

Several tries later, no joy.

Thanks again for the suggestion.