Upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7, but Will not Activate!

Here are the results from Showkey.

This machine was originally shipped with Win7 Home, had it's original HDD replaced due to damage, was later upgraded to windows 10 from inside 7.

Last September the HDD was removed to be used in another machine and a new SSD was installed in this one. Win10 was clean installed from a flash drive created using the media creation tool, and it correctly identified the Win7 BIOS key and activated with no problems.

In January the keyboard was replaced, then about a month later windows reported that it wasn't activated. The keyboard is the only hardware change since W10 was last activated. My understanding is that the motherboard is the only component that should trigger deactivation so the keyboard replacement is unlikely to have caused this.

orangeanorak said:

Win10 was clean installed from a flash drive created using the media creation tool, and it correctly identified the Win7 BIOS key and activated with no problems.

I'm sorry, but that is impossible. There have never been Windows 7 product keys stored in BIOS that could be retrieved to activate Windows. If there was a product key in bios, Showkey would display it. What happened was Windows 10 retrieved the digital entitlement stored on Microsoft activation servers when the first upgrade was done. Now something is keeping Windows 10 from retrieving that digital entitlement.

So, what I would try:
Disable any firewalls, including Windows firewall and anti-virus programs that could be blocking network traffic to Microsoft activation servers.

in an elevated command prompt run:
slmgr /upk
slmgr /ipk YTMG3-N6DKC-DKB77-7M9GH-8HVX7
slmgr /ato

Show us the results you get from the last command

all done - blocked

Superfly said:

you may have to go the Win 7 install upgrade route with phone activation of the COA key.

orangeanorak,

Does the computer have a COA sticker on it? Before you install Windows 7 (which you might have to do), you can upgrade to build 10586 Windows 10 and then attempt to enter the Windows 7 Product Key from the COA sticker to activate it. Build 10240 that you have now will not accept Windows 7/8/8.1 product key inputs.

Yes it has the Win7 product key sticker - I will do this tomorrow

Will this wipe my installed programs and data

orangeanorak said:

Yes it has the Win7 product key sticker - I will do this tomorrow

Will this wipe my installed programs and data

There are several options to keep your programs, data and settings. The first thing you will want to do is update to build 10586. Follow this procedure:
Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First - Windows 10 Forums

As long as you download a fresh ISO file, that procedure will update you to build 10586. Then go to the activation screen under settings, update and security and change product key, enter the product key on the COA sticker. Hope and pray that works because if it does, you are done.

If that doesn't work you have a few options - in order of my personal preference. For any of these options you will need a Windows 7 install media DVD or USB flash drive. If you need that, we can show you where to get an ISO file.

If you have a spare internal hard drive, temporarily install Windows 7 on it. Disconnect your Windows 10 HDD, connect the spare HDD drive. Boot the computer from Windows 7 USB/DVD and install Windows 7 to the spare HDD. This will erase what is on the spare HDD. Use the Windows 7 product key from the COA sticker to install Windows 7. You will probably have to activate Windows 7 using phone activation. Once you get Windows 7 activated on the spare hard drive, do the first 6 steps here to get the genuineticket.xml file:
Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First - Windows 10 Forums

Then put your Windows 10 HDD back in and copy the genuineticket.xml file to the right folder, restart, it should activate and you are done.

OR

If you have an external hard drive or other storage location with a lot of free space, install Macrium Reflect Free. Make an image of your Windows 10 HDD and make a Macrium Rescue USB/DVD. Or you can download Kyhi's PE rescue USB/DVD here:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

It has Macrium Reflect Free on it and you can use it to both make the image and restore it later. Once you have the image made and saved somewhere, then do a clean install of Windows 7 onto the Windows 1o HDD. This will erase it. Activate Windows 7, then capture the genuineticket.xml file and save it where you saved the image file. Boot to Macrium Reflect and restore the Windows 10 image back to the HDD. Copy over the genuineticket.xml file and restart to activate it.

OR

Either install MiniTool Partition Wizard Free or use Kyhi's rescue USB/DVD which has MiniTool Partition Wizard Free on it. Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to shrink the C: drive partition on the Windows 10 HDD by 50GB. Create a new 50GB primary partition formatted to NTFS. Boot from Windows 7 install USB/DVD and install Windows 7 to the new partition. This will set up dual booting. Activate Windows 7, capture the genuineticket.xml file. Go back to Windows 10, copy the genuineticket.xml file and restart. Then you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to delete the Windows 7 partition and use the boot tab of msconfig to remove the Windows 7 boot menu entry.

I've actually done all these processes myself and if done correctly they will work.

Thanks very much for your help.

I ended up reinstalling Windows 7 from the disc that came with the laptop and installing updates until it upgraded to Windows 10.

All sorted.