I have installed a win 10 on my win8.1 computer on differant partition.
After few days win 8.1 say that my activation key is wrong and I need to reactivate.
I'm affraid that reactivation will only after my next win 10 upgrade ( probably reseting key in the bios )
What can I do ?
Hello re66 Welcome to the Ten Forums!
From what you are saying you saw a custom clean install of 10 to a separate primary partition on your 8.1 machine and did 8.1 become inactivated or simply Windows 10 that hasn't activated so far? And did you are not already upgrade over a previous version or simply toss 10 first? which it sounds like you did and 10 simply will not activate.
If Windows 8.1 became inactivated by chance that would be either from finding a way to shrink the 8.1 partition if 8.1 came preinstalled on the machine or you saw a hardware change of another type. Adding in a separate drive for 10 shouldn't have any effect while any changes on the main board itself would since 8.1 would be tied to the board.
For 10 on the other hand to see activation you first have to see 10 upgrade over a previous version. That would include even a temp install or clone even system image of 8.1 being restored to where the 10 install is presently seen. The upgrade paths for 10 are seen in the guide for upgrading to 10. Windows 10 - Upgrade Installation - Windows 10 Forums[2]=Installation%20and%20Setup
In order for the free upgrade to work that's it you have to "upgrade" over a previous version and allow the 10 upgrade to first activate to the present hardware situation and board on your machine before you can turn around and perform a custom "Clean Install " of the new version as you apparently already did but by following the upgrade path allowed for you there. For 8.1 Core or Home you would see 10 Home. For 8.1 Pro you would follow to 10 Pro.
I would start by running showkey from this forum:
Showkey - Windows 10 Forums
On the Win 8.1 side and see what it says for keys that you have on your computer.
There is no way for any version of Windows to change a key stored in BIOS.
The only thing that could be gumming up the works would be the 8.1 becoming buggy or the drive itself starting to show bad sectors where the profile information is getting trashed. Windows will then see itself as invalid. On 7 the watermark would have been seen due to any hardware changes made there.
Well, it might be an explanation. If you installed the new drive and it has higher boot priority (check BIOS), then the old one with Windows 8.1 has become second. Windows 8.1 see that as you moved the installation to a new computer.
Things to try:
1) Change the boot priority in BIOS so the old drive is first and then the Windows 10 drive. Then boot into Windows 8.1 and see if it is activated. If it is not, then try to activate automatically. Since the rest of the hardware is the same, you shouldn't have any problem.
2) Use a utility such as EasyBCD to add a boot entry for Windows 10.
3) Boot into Windows 10 and check activation. If it is not yet activated, do it automatically.
If everything goes right, you should now dual boot Windows 8.1 and 10. If you want Windows 10 to be the default, use EasyBCD again to make it default. You can even change the boot entry descriptions into more meaningful such as "Windows 8.1 Pro" and "Windows 10 Pro"
If tthe upgrade install to 10 was already seen the clean install will be activated before you even see the desktop arrive for the first time. You can verify that by going right into the "Start>Settings>User accounts" right click on the Start button for the Control Panel to get into System which will show if you are activated or not.
For simply tossing a clean install of 10 without even seeing the initial upgrade install take place and that activated to your system the clean install won't either. The activation servers have no record of activating 10 on the machine. The key or hardware profile ID produced is then simply blocked as a result.
Now a short time ago someone else having NVidia and Intel driver issues was having a similar problem with 8.1 becoming inactivated until a System Restore point was used to roll things back before the drivers went on. 8.1 was then suddenly found activated again as another possible cause. Apparently 8.1 suddenly saw the present video card as a hardware change due to some type of driver clash. Yo might be running into a similar problem.
This means that changing the graphics card (upgrade to a faster) has the risk to inactivate Windows? I don't think this is true. But even then, you should be able to activate again without any issue. At worst case you can always do it by phone.
It wouldn't necessarily apply to expansion cards in every instance but items like the memory installed on your system. On 7 when swapping out Muskin Enhanced DDR3 1600 memory that had become a problem due to the height of the dimms themselves once the heat sink Rather Large HSF would not fit down in place with those dimms present. Of the four 2gb dimms a pair ended in one case while the others ended up in a mini tower I use for the second test system here.
As soon as some new Kingston memory went in to replace the Mushkin it was time to call MS! Yet on the second mini tower that saw a pair of those see 10 upgrade over 7 and activate become unactivated when swapping those out for some new Kingston memory being the Hyper X "Fury" performance still DDR 3 1600 1.5v memory the 10 install later reactivated itself following a few restarts. That was a switch!
The change of brands not the type of memory was the problem in both instances where MS is presently a little more lax at this time in order to get more people into 10 and the reactivation for anything less vital not the main board itself however is simply sliding by at the moment to an extent. For seeing 8.1 suddenly lose it's activation on the other hand you might just have to make the call if this should come again while it still seems a bit odd that a driver clash would trash activation on it's own.
In any case, you should be able to activate automatically. Don't worry. If not, call Microsoft and do it by phone. They will see from the numbers you tell them that you have genuine Windows and will give you the activation code. Maybe they will ask you if you have installed Windows in another computer, you say no and that's it.
The problem itself may have been something in 8.1 there that got messed up in some way with or without 10 even being on the system. You might even be able to see it corrected by running the System File Checker tool having the 8.1 recovery media if any plugged in or in the optical drive if that finds anything corrupted or missing. If that is the case once the file(s) replacement takes place you may 8.1 reactivated itself later. You simply type "sfc /scannow" in at either the command prompt(admin) window or open the run command line option you have to dig for now with 10 however. I pinned that to the task bar here since in 7 it was simply a quick look on the old Start menu there.
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