New
#20
First... Softpedia... they're idiots.
Second, nearly every case of failed activation I've seen can be accounted for by one of a few cases.
1) Clean install first - obviously, this won't work
2) Did not wait for upgrade to be activated before clean installing
3) Upgrade first, then attempting to clean install with wrong edition (Pro media from a Home activation, for instance). Many people mistakenly create the wrong media, then use that same wrong media over and over and get frustrated that its not working.
4) Upgraded first (or not), then used some key finding utility to find the key, then attempting to use this key when installing clean - This shouldn't even accept the key, but apparently it does accept it for some people, then activation fails usually with blocked key msg.
5) activation server overload. This just takes time to activate, usually after a clean install after first upgrading. You can attempt to use slmgr /ato to force re-activation and eventually activation will succeed.
6) Some people ended up with networking that doesn't work correctly after the upgrade, this prevents activation as well. So their original upgrade did not activate before they started a clean install. This is really an extension of #2.
Activation is something that shouldn't vary from system to system, it can only fail for one of a few reasons. If you're doing a clean install generally speaking, it means you either didn't originally get your system upgraded, or you have clean installed with the wrong media, or the servers are just failing.
Dang, it took my Windows 7 activation no problem! It was activated the moment I was done upgrading.
I had reserved an activation, and I was supposed to wait for the installer to be loaded into my system. But they were taking way too long to get it to me so I found an untouched ISO image and used that. Looks like updates are activating correctly but not clean installs.
I upgraded a purchased retail copy of Windows 8.1 through the app last night and it still hasn't activated. I am getting the 0xC004C003 error message and am waitng for awhile per everything I am reading online. It's a little frustrating but not surprising because of the sheer number of people upgrading.
Sorry to ask what is probably a silly question, but just how do you get the software to do a clean install on an existing system, and what exactly do do you men by a clean install?