New laptop with Win10 pre-installed won't activate

Hi there. I'm hopeful you can help me with my problem.

I recently purchased a new MSI laptop with Windows 10 Home Edition already installed. I asked the authorized re-seller to perform a clean Windows installation so as not to have to deal with bloatware.

When my laptop arrived, I skipped the activation step when I first booted it up - I didn't have a disk or email receipt with the product key, after all, and from what I understand, with Windows 10 manufacturers no longer put a sticker on the device with the product key. Then I started getting nag messages telling me Windows wasn't activated. When I went to Settings, it said that my product key is already in use by another PC. Any attempts to "change product key" result in freezing the Settings window, and I have to go to the Task Manager to end the task.

I have been working with both MSI and the re-seller to try to figure out how to fix this, but it's taking some time and I'm getting impatient... and therefore, I have been researching on my own as well. :) But it would seem that the re-seller messed up the clean installation, possibly by using an incorrect version of Windows, such as Professional.

My laptop did not arrive with a Windows disk. I have 2 drives - a small SSD on which Windows is installed, and a large secondary hard drive. Disk management is showing a recovery partition on both drives, but they have 100% free space.

So, I have many questions, but these are my 2 big ones:
1. Can I use the OEM key to get Windows to activate? I found a utility to show the key, and instructions on Microsoft's website to activate Windows with a different product key using command prompts.
2. Or would it be better to reset the PC? Will that pickup with original product key, instead of the one the re-seller used? I'm concerned that I'll be prompted to put my Windows disk or recovery disk in, of which I have neither.

I'm not so impatient that I'm going to make any changes on my own without authorization from MSI and the re-seller. But I would appreciate your input. Thanks!

That's the utility I found! Here you go...

If the re-seller hadn't activated the original install of Windows before installing Win 10 you'll likely have to rollback to the original, activate it, perform an upgrade to 10 and do a clean install from there.

From an elevated command prompt ("run as administrator" command prompt) type:

SLMGR /UPK

then type

SLMGR /IPK xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx using the original OEM key provided by showkey.

Then type SLMGR /ATO

Thank you to the person that posted this problem and a bigger thank you for this response. i also purchased my laptop from a re-seller who had no idea what to do after he had restored the machine and sold it to me. i also didn't have a product key. I used ShowKeyPlus and I was able to use the OEM Key to activate my Windows. Thank you so much

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https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/3...dows-10-a.html

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/7...dows-10-a.html


From an elevated command prompt ("run as administrator" command prompt) type:

SLMGR /UPK

then type

SLMGR /IPK xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx using the original OEM key provided by showkey.

Then type SLMGR /ATO