Activation after computer repair

I have two identical lenovo laptops. The first one was upgraded to win10 (and was activated I believe), but the display has failed. The 2nd one which was still running win8 also failed because the hard drive (ssd) stopped responding. So I took the hard drive from the win10 computer and put it into the other one, and now at least I have one working computer, but now it says that windows 10 is not activated. How can I activate it? On the back I see the laptop serial number and windows 8 sticker but there are no product keys on the sticker.

Also I'm ordering parts to fix the other one and I'm wondering if I will also be able to update that one to windows 10. Conceivably I could swap the SSDs around again once I get the other computer working and perhaps that would make it easier to activate ... but I've got to send the working one back to my daughter as soon as possible.

~Paul

Superfly said:

Hi Paul
- if it matches the installed edition ...

What do you mean by installed edition?
Show key doesn't show that, just the original edition and the OEM edition as shown
below in my showkeyplus output (obscured with some xxxyyyzzz characters)

Windows Product Key Information
Product Name: Windows 10 Home
Product ID: 00326-10000-00000-wwwww
Installed Key: YTMG3-N6DKC-zzzzz-zzzzz-zzzzz
Original Key: JB2NB-HBMGQ-yyyyy-yyyyy-yyyyy
Original Edition: Win 8.1 RTM Core OEMM
OEM Key: 23KNM-B6V2H-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
OEM Edition: Win 8.1 RTM Core OEMM

Superfly said:

You need to activate with this PC's OEM key.

And for clarification that would be the:
23KNM-B6V2H-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

You can try this, right click on start icon, select Command Prompt (Admin). Then run the following commands:

slmgr /upk
slmgr /ipk 23KNM-B6V2H-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
slmgr /ato

If that fails then go back to:
slmgr /ipk YTMG3-N6DKC-zzzzz-zzzzz-zzzzz
slmgr /ato

and see if that picks up the activation. Obviously you will be entering the full product keys in the above commands.

I had a similar situation. I had two identical model laptops and my daughter's screen hinge failed, so I took her hard drive and put it in the identical spare laptop I had. Well, I forgot that the spare laptop only had Windows 10 Pro on it, and never had Windows 10 Home, and my daughter's was Windows 10 Home. I lost activation, but there was a Windows 8 Core product key in Bios, so I had to "jiggle" the activation using the above command's to get the Windows 10 Home to activate from the product key in bios. Like jiggling the handle on the toilet to get it to stop running.

NavyLCDR said:

You can try this, right click on start icon, select Command Prompt (Admin). Then run the following commands:
slmgr /upk
slmgr /ipk 23KNM-B6V2H-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

The response from windows script host from this was:
Error: 0xC004E016 On a computer running Microst Windows non-core edition,
run 'slui.exe 0x2a 0xc004E016 to display the error text.

NavyLCDR said:

If that fails then go back to:
slmgr /ipk YTMG3-N6DKC-zzzzz-zzzzz-zzzzz
slmgr /ato
and see if that picks up the activation.

The response from the /ipk command was "Installed product key YTMG3-....-.... successfully.
But the response to the /apo command was:
"Activating Windows(R), Core edition (2b1f36bb-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx97d8) ...
Error: 0x803F7001 On a computer running Microsoft Windows non-core edition,
run 'slui.exe 0x2a 0x803F7001' to display the error text.

Of course the error text did not provide anything that looked remotely useful or interesting.

Any more ideas?

pmennen said:

Any more ideas?

Dang it. I was getting the same errors at first, and there were so many different variations of /ipk, /upk, and /ato that I can't honestly remember the exact sequence that got mine to active. Try going to the activation screen under settings, updates & security and change the product key there to 23KNM-B6V2H-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx.

I can tell you what will absolutely 100% work, but you won't like it. That would be to attach a temporary hard drive or create a temporary partition on the existing SSD, install Windows 8 to it. Let that activate and grab the genuineticket.xml file, then go back and copy the .xml file to the Windows 10 to activate it.

Oh hell.....that jogged my memory - that's what I did on the spare laptop because I originally tried Windows 7 on it, but it wouldn't boot so I had to dig up an old Windows 8 install media and go with that. I wasn't able to activate Windows 10 with product keys only. I used MiniTool Partition Wizard Free to shrink the Windows 10 partition by 50GB, created and formatted (NTFS) a new 50GB partition in the free space, then (eventually) installed Windows 8 to the blank, formatted partition. Grabbed the genuineticket.xml file, deleted the Windows 8 partition and removed the dual boot entry for Windows 8 using msconfig in Windows 10.

NavyLCDR said:

Try going to the activation screen under settings, updates & security and change the product key there to 23KNM-B6V2H-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx.

That did the trick. Glad I didn't have to go to your more drastic measures :)

Thanks for the help!
~Paul

pmennen said:

That did the trick. Glad I didn't have to go to your more drastic measures :)

Thanks for the help!
~Paul

Well, the credit for that goes to @Superfly...that was his first suggestion