Windows 10 reinstall on new hardware - activation error

Hi folks,

History:
a) Had Windows 7 (bought the DVD in a box with a genuine product key years ago) - was running fine.
b) Upgraded online to Windows 10 during the free upgrade period after W10 went general release.
So it was a digital license linked to my Microsoft account.
It ran fine until last week when I decided to move to new hardware.
Reasonably significant hardware change:
- Different motherboard
- More RAM
- Different Hard disks

Current State:
Had some issues coming up with an upgrade scenario to reinstall W10 on the new hardware, but thanks to some very helpful folks over in the Upgrade Forum here, I got that solved quick smart. Ended up creating a USB key to install from (new mobo has UEFI BIOS which is new to me)

W10 now installed fine, but I get an error trying to activate it:
"We can't reactivate Windows on this device. Try again later".
When I installed W10 I selected the "I don't have a product key" option as I believe it should then activate later against my MS account, but that's the bit that's broken.
(I did read somewhere that in my situation I could also provide my W7 product key at the prompt [which I still have] and that should work, but I haven't done that yet. Happy to reinstall and do that if that's what you guys think I should do, but would rather run this to ground first !)

As per the troubleshooting tips here, I have run the Activation troubleshooter. Contents attached to this message (I hope).

Any tips / suggestions much appreciated !!

Sal

Update

Out of morbid curiosity, after posting my question above I opted to contact Microsoft support via their online chat.
I have to admit that, cynic as I am, their response was extremely good, and they solved my problem for me.

They responded to my chat within a minute and very professionally remoted in to my machine, diagnosed the problem, and fixed it.

So my advice to those who have genuinely licensed software is - give MS a chance to fix it as well.
I know that the knowledge base here is tremendous, but if you have the chance I would say post here and ping MS as well.

I'm still not clear on what my original problem was, but I am assured that the new solution is now tied to my MS account so this shouldn't be a problem moving forward.

Sal

Salsiccia said:

I'm still not clear on what my original problem was, but I am assured that the new solution is now tied to my MS account so this shouldn't be a problem moving forward.

Major hardware changes can often be the root of such problems. You are not the first (and won't be the last) to be pleasantly surprised how helpful MS can be in such cases.

Bree said:

Major hardware changes can often be the root of such problems. You are not the first (and won't be the last) to be pleasantly surprised how helpful MS can be in such cases.

Yes Bree, I must admit that as a long time IT Pro I have always been anti-MS, but I must admit that in recent times they do actually seem to have grasped the concept of support.

I encourage our readers to give them a chance.