Laptop SSD upgrade win 10 instilation gone wrong

Hi there,

I bought a laptop with Win 10 Home on it and then bought an SSD and put it in the laptop. To install Win 10 on the SSD I first downloaded the Win 10 Home Single Language on my PC and burned it to a DVD. Then I formated and partitioned the hard drive and SSD on the laptop and installed Win 10 from the DVD onto the SSD. Unfortunately it didn't activate even though I had read online that it would do so as Win 10 activates based on the hardware.

I then connected the laptop to the internet and tried the MS tool on that and selected Upgrade. It went through the instillation but again didn't activate. I used ShowKeyPlus which gave my OEM Key and said the OEM Version was "Win 10 RTM Core OEM:DM", this is in the UK in case it makes a difference. I have looked for a place to download a "Win 10 RTM Core OEM:DM" iso but haven't had any luck.

Is there a way to salvage this situation or do I need to buy/crack win 10 the day after I bought it along with the laptop? :p

I found that a new SSD on a laptop is enough of a hardware change to prevent activation being recognised. However you should have been given a product key when you bought it with W10 and you should be able to use that. Calling Microsoft to have them activate you over the phone may be an option if you explain what you have done. There is an activation tutorial you can read through and it may help.

Installing an SSD is not enough of a hardware change to prevent activation. What you did wrong, Falesh, was using the single language edition of Windows 10. You want English - United Kingdom (or English - International) Windows 10 - not the single language version.

Once you have the correct Windows 10 downloaded you will have to do another clean install.

NavyLCDR said:

Installing an SSD is not enough of a hardware change to prevent activation.

That's what I thought too but I ended up having to reinstall my original W7 on my laptop and go through the upgrade again. However, your point about the language has now made me wonder if I had also selected the wrong edition. Note: it was a replacement of a HDD with an SSD so not really an addition of an SSD.

philc43 said:

That's what I thought too but I ended up having to reinstall my original W7 on my laptop and go through the upgrade again. However, your point about the language has now made me wonder if I had also selected the wrong edition.

Early on (July-September) Microsoft had some off and on issues with their activation servers and some of the initial upgrade activations did not get stored correctly and, thus, subsequent activations relying on retrieving the stored activations would fail.

NavyLCDR said:

Early on (July-September) Microsoft had some off and on issues with their activation servers and some of the initial upgrade activations did not get stored correctly and, thus, subsequent activations relying on retrieving the stored activations would fail.

That's exactly when I did it (early Sept) so does explain why I had trouble. Thanks!

When I do the clean install with the right windows version should I enter the OEM key? Cheers!

No, just skip that stage and allow W10 to activate itself from the stored data on the Microsoft servers once the installation is complete.

Thought I read somewhere that you can use the CD key from the OS that you have originally upgraded from. Is it true? I'm about to do a clean install on a new SSD here soon too.

seek said:

Thought I read somewhere that you can use the CD key from the OS that you have originally upgraded from. Is it true? I'm about to do a clean install on a new SSD here soon too.

Yes, that was a change Microsoft made to simplify activation and implemented it with the recent update.

Falesh will not need to do that since he already had a successfully activated W10 installation, if you read his original post you will see he did not upgrade from a previous version of Windows.