Anniversary update has defaulted to COA screen?

Skywalker · 01 Sep 2016

I have a laptop that came with windows 8.1 and the COA was embedded (so I have never seen it). I upgraded to the free win 10 that was available prior to July 29th cutoff. All was fine, a little buggy at times but upgraded and activated. So the anniversary update happened one day during "check for updates". It ran all afternoon and into the night, the next day when it came to life it started asking for the COA. I have no idea what it is, any way around this?

Thank you MS for hiding the COA

alphanumeric · 01 Sep 2016

Showkey will show you your embedded key, https://www.tenforums.com/software-ap...7-showkey.html
Windows shouldn't be asking for it now though, if it was already upgraded and activated?
Your PC will have a generic key issued with the free upgrades Digital License.
What does it say in Settings > Update & security > Activation?

Superfly · 01 Sep 2016

As alpha says... it should not prompt for a key (it's semantics, but by COA you mean embedded OEM, I assume) - Prob. a glitch connecting to the activation server.

alphanumeric · 01 Sep 2016

I took his COA reference to mean he's looking for his OEM product key, and couldn't find the sticker. I think there is a sticker, it just doesn't have a key on it.
All Windows 8 and 10 PC's now activate online, OEM and Retail. You hunch about server glitch is spot on. That or the files dealing with authenticity on the PC are corrupted?
You know a lot more about that than I ever will, lol.

alphanumeric · 01 Sep 2016

@ Skywalker, "has defaulted to COA screen", more info on that screen or message your getting might help sort it out? A screen shot if possible.

Superfly · 01 Sep 2016

alphanumeric said:

I took his COA reference to mean he's looking for his OEM product key, and couldn't find the sticker. I think there is a sticker, it just doesn't have a key on it.
All Windows 8 and 10 PC's now activate online, OEM and Retail. You hunch about server glitch is spot on. That or the files dealing with authenticity on the PC are corrupted?

Yup, that was how I understood it as well ... file corruption seems less evident with Win10 than Win8... even with the latter, there was a fail-safe (anti-piracy) "sfc" type auto-repair - I think they added an auto-detect to that now.

alphanumeric said:

You know a lot more about that than I ever will, lol.

LOL... you do have an immaculate understanding of the activation process, nevertheless

alphanumeric · 01 Sep 2016

You must get a tweet every time showkey is mentioned, lol.

You more often than not the next post after I link to it in a thread.
I like to think I have a decent handle on how it works, or is supposed to work. That info isn't easy to come by. Microsoft isn't saying how it works for obvious reasons.
If a friend drops a PC off for me to "fix" I endeavor to get it legal again, if it isn't. That's what got me researching how it may have been cheated in the first place.
Now that I'm an MVP, I sometimes wonder if I'm giving out too much info on how it works. And if anybody is "watching" what I post?
Anyway, now we'll just have to wait and see what the OP has to say.