HP laptop from retailer Windows key will expire (shows as GVLK)

Hey,

First, I'm sorry if the title is not to informative, also for not browsing too many threads before posting this.
My father got a laptop from a retailer in Thailand, its a HP Pavillion 15 - ac628TU and it came with Windows 10 PRO, pre-installed.

The PC didn't seem to come with any software like HP laptops would usually come with and i did check the laptop's BIOS and it does show that it was not meant to come out of the factory with a Windows (i lost myself here, but bottom line, there are some ID's for the system board its just that it was not injected with a Windows license) and no it doesn't have a recovery partition either.

Anyway, the laptop was working properly, i even put the UEFI diagnostics in it, BIOS and drivers were up to date except for a few weeks when the laptop showed "..Your license key will expire soon.."

So i have checked one of your threads and have noticed the Windows license key and also checked it and its a volume license key (GVLK). I did try to activate it and it gave me the error: 0xc004f074

Now, to be honest i'm kinda lost with the laptop and that's because i can't tell what the guys did there, and because i have no idea how dad used the laptop.

Would any of the following help?:
-Performing a system reset;
-Creating a Windows 10 USB from the MS site and installing Windows 10 again
-Adding a Microsoft account (laptop currently has a local account only)

Also, how do i know if the license key is pirated or not ?


Kind regards,

Steven

Edit: About the laptop not being assembled by HP with a Windows OS, In BIOS it shows "Factory installed OS: Non-Windows"

Welcome to TenForums,

Short answer: I'm sorry to tell you you've been had. Buy a legitimate licence from Microsoft and you can change the product key to make it legitimate.

Long answer: you are not the first, see this lengthy thread on the same subject...
Windows 10 Pro expiration/activation problem

It's possible (but unlikely) that at some time in its life it was upgraded to 10 and has a digital licence, the way to find out is one of the things discussed in the thread above.

Googling the model number indicates that it was supplied by HP with FreeDos as the operating system http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04941658.

Was this laptop a replacement for a previous computer that had a digital license attached to a Microsoft account on it? If so, see here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...troubleshooter

Click on "You recently made a significant hardware change"

and

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530

Hey!

Thanks for all the answers again.

I did go through that long post again and checked to see if the Windows key is or not worth something. I tried talking with someone from from Thailand about it but they have no idea and just told me to take it back to the shop as they will fix it for me. In the end i just put Ubuntu on it, my dad won't use it for anything else either, just browsing the web.
The invoice mentioned just the laptop without the Windows 10 and that could mean that if i take it back to them next month, they would do the same thing, more or less.

Thank you for your time and information guys.