he said he couldn't help I need to contact windows support - I then decided to phone and got someone in india who was as useful as a chocolate fire guard.... I have no idea what to do - its shocking I update bios to fix win10 problem and now I have no activated windows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you have a backup image of the OS you upgraded from? If so, you can restore it and then update to Windows 10 again. I am not 100% sure of what Microsoft's servers will do but since your computer now looks different then maybe a 2nd update might work. It's worth a try, however the best solution is to get Microsoft support to help you activate it.
Call them again, they should be able to help you. If the person you talk to is no help, ask to speak to a supervisor.
Don't take no for an answer, it's their problem, make them fix it.
When talking to them, be nice, don't raise your voice but be persistent.
Try to manually re-activate by doing this several times.
Run the Command Prompt as administrator, type slmgr.vbs /ato and press enter.
Hmmm....
I have no personal experience with that. For Windows 7, support for activation was by different people than Microsoft support. Activation was all that they did.
I believe that I once triggered the need to reactivate under XP by installing some Intel hard disk drivers. It's unlikely that was all that was required to invalidate the activation, but changes are cumulative.
Maybe you should try support again. The competence level of people ins support jobs like that is pretty variable, even if they hold the same job. It would be helpful if you could calmly and clearly explain the problem. (Not that I know that you weren't calm and clear.) I haven't dealt with them for a few years, but they in the past they didn't have the main job of just telling you to buy a new license.
yeah I think its because of the upgrade they don't really know...
Can I really load my Windows 7 again and upgrade it back to Windows 10 (even though I have clean installed windows 10 now so cant roll back?)
I thought you lose your previous OS license key when you upgrade to Windows 10?
If this definitely works I will try that when I get home tonight
This will work, you can always reinstall the prior OS and that licence key will be valid. If it's retail windows it's yours to do with as you please, If it's oem on the machine then it belongs to that machine, just reinstall it and then do the upgrade again.
I also did this myself as the bios was corrupted by the win 10 update resulting in a new motherboard purchase which I then had to reinstall windows 8 on then upgrade as soon as it was activated, I didn't bother with updates or anything else just jumped straight to windows 10.
Sounds like a good idea Maggelan :)
Will this work even though I did a clean install after the upgrade to Windows 10?
If YES - Is the process:-
Install Windows 7 and then how do I then upgrade this to windows 10? Will the upgrade to windows 10 icon pop up again quickly?
Many thanks for you help
Media Creation Tool:
Windows 10
My personal preference is to download the .iso and upgrade from that. Win 8.1 natively mounts an .iso. From Windows 7, you'd need either a freeware tool to mount the .iso as a virtual drive, or to create media. ( For that, I recommend a USB flash drive, 8 GB or larger. It runs a lot faster than a DVD. I made one using diskpart. Some people prefer Rufus [freeware].)
There's a lot of confusion right now as to what Win10 will consider as a 'new machine' with licensing. If a simple bios update is enough to break it they're going to be forced to give in some. Heck, I think you should certainly be able to upgrade your motherboard at least once without hassle but apparently that's not in the cards now either. I shudder to think of buying an oem copy each time over the years with a motherboard replacement. But a bios update? That's plain nuts.
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