Need Help Activating Windows 10 After Complete Hardware Change?

Ok, sad to say, but my 8 year old died on me. I am in the process of collecting some spare change to save up for my new Ryzen Build.

OK, so someone told me, you have to run the activation troubleshooter. I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro on that computer from Windows 8.1 Upgrade from Windows 7. Will Windows Activate, or will I have to phone them up?

zbook said:

One of these links may be useful:

Microsoft activation and hardware changehttps://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/950929/get-help-activating-microsoft-windowshttps://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12440/windows-10-activationhttps://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-changehttps://support.microsoft.com/en-us/products/windows?os=windows-10

Thanks but this didn't help

AntiMalware said:

Thanks but this didn't help

Then what help were you looking for? The next to the last link above gave you step by step instructions on how to activate Windows after you change the motherboard.

AntiMalware said:

OK, so someone told me, you have to run the activation troubleshooter. I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro on that computer from Windows 8.1 Upgrade from Windows 7. Will Windows Activate, or will I have to phone them up?

There are 5 ways that Windows 10 will activate:

1. It will read a Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 product key stored in BIOS or UEFI firmware on the motherboard and use that to activate. This only applies to computer manufacturers that put a license/product key in their BIOS/UEFI and won't be there on a motherboard bought at retail so Windows won't activate this way.

2. Windows 10 will calculate a unique Hardware ID based upon the characteristics of the computer it is installed on - a motherboard change will change the Hardware ID. Windows 10 will send the Hardware ID to MS Activation Servers and if there is a matching license for Windows 10 stored there, it will retrieve that and activate Windows. A new motherboard that has never had Windows 10 installed on it before will not have a digital license stored, so Windows will not activate this way the first time it is installed on that motherboard.

3. The user supplies a product key. If you have a retail product key for Windows 7/8/8.1 or 10, you can enter that and chances are better than not that it will activate without a call being required to Microsoft.

4. You use the activation troubleshooter to copy a digital license from one device on your Microsoft Account to the new device. You haven't told us if the current broken device is linked to your Microsoft Account nor if you are replacing with the same class of device (laptop, tablet, desktop, virtual machine). Therefore we can't know if this option is available to you or not.

5. You call Microsoft, tell them your sad story, and they activate Windows 10 for you.