Windows 10 Upgrade - Failed to Validate Product Key

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  1. Posts : 9
    Windows 7
       #1

    Windows 10 Upgrade - Failed to Validate Product Key


    Good morning all,

    I am trying to upgrade one of our Laptops in our lab to Windows 10 Pro. It currently has Windows 7 Pro on it, and when I attempt to use the DVD copy I burned I am getting the dreaded "Setup has failed to validate the product key".

    I went back to my settings and re-entered my product key again just to ensure that was not the problem and Windows 7 accepted it (again!) and activated my copy. However, when I ran the setup again it gave me the same error message and I am not able to continue with the install. And yes, I have tried using administrative credentials to no avail.

    It's not defective media as I have already used this disk to upgrade another system to Windows 10 (however, the other system was a HOME install, not a PRO install). Further to that I tried using this disk on another Win 7 Pro install and it worked without incident. So I know it has something to do with the system or Win 7 Pro install itself on this PC.

    When I try installing from boot it will not allow me to upgrade the current system - it tells me to boot into windows to complete an upgrade.

    Any ideas? I checked the system logs and there is no mention as to why the install is failing. I'd prefer to do an upgrade as opposed to a full install as I have a lot of configs and settings that would be a major PITA to redo.

    Thanks.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 23,195
    Windows 10
       #2

    Activation servers have been turned off for now

    If you try tomorrow it should be fine
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 9
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       #3

    paulsalter said:
    Activation servers have been turned off for now

    If you try tomorrow it should be fine
    Ok, thanks. However, I do find it strange that another Win7 Pro machine I have here worked fine and went through the install of Win 10 Pro without incident.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 23,195
    Windows 10
       #4

    brianp said:
    Ok, thanks. However, I do find it strange that another Win7 Pro machine I have here worked fine and went through the install of Win 10 Pro without incident.
    Has the other machine had 10 on it at anytime in the past?

    From what I have seen, some people have had it work if the machine has already been registered as using 10, but new machines cannot be set up yet
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 9
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       #5

    paulsalter said:
    Has the other machine had 10 on it at anytime in the past?

    From what I have seen, some people have had it work if the machine has already been registered as using 10, but new machines cannot be set up yet
    Nope.....it's only had Win7 Pro from the factory on it - Win10 has never been applied in any form (beta, etc.).
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 4,453
    Win 11 Pro 22000.708
       #6

    brianp said:
    Good morning all,

    I am trying to upgrade one of our Laptops in our lab to Windows 10 Pro. It currently has Windows 7 Pro on it, and when I attempt to use the DVD copy I burned I am getting the dreaded "Setup has failed to validate the product key".

    (snip)

    Thanks.
    What product key was that?

    When I installed 10240 over a freshly restored Win 8.1 installation (activated), the installer asked for no key. The Windows 10 installation was activated.

    This was using an .iso that was prepared from an .esd from an online upgrade. I prefer to avoid stacking upgrades, so I restored 8.1 from an image and used the .iso to upgrade that to 10240.

    Haven't done it over 7, but I'd expect the same behavior.
      My Computers


  7. Posts : 9
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       #7

    bobkn said:
    What product key was that?

    When I installed 10240 over a freshly restored Win 8.1 installation (activated), the installer asked for no key. The Windows 10 installation was activated.

    This was using an .iso that was prepared from an .esd from an online upgrade. I prefer to avoid stacking upgrades, so I restored 8.1 from an image and used the .iso to upgrade that to 10240.

    Haven't done it over 7, but I'd expect the same behavior.
    I have no idea which product key to which it is referring. I would guess my Windows 7 product key. It didn't specifically say which key failed validation.

    This was an original from the factory install of Windows 7 - is was not an upgrade from a previous install. I would prefer not to do a fresh restore - if that's the case I might as well do a clean install because I have a lot of reconfiguration to do if I did restore.

    And that's my point - on the other two systems on which I installed Windows 10 (home and pro), neither complained about a product key or requested me to put one it - they just happily chugged along and installed Windows 10 without incident. The specific machine I am trying to upgrade is the one giving me grief.

    Thanks for your input though. :)
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 1
    Windows 7
       #8

    I had the same issue at first.

    Ended up being my Anti-Virus interfering with the validation check somehow.

    Disable your anti-virus, and try again.

    Hope that helps you out.

    brianp said:
    Good morning all,

    I am trying to upgrade one of our Laptops in our lab to Windows 10 Pro. It currently has Windows 7 Pro on it, and when I attempt to use the DVD copy I burned I am getting the dreaded "Setup has failed to validate the product key".

    I went back to my settings and re-entered my product key again just to ensure that was not the problem and Windows 7 accepted it (again!) and activated my copy. However, when I ran the setup again it gave me the same error message and I am not able to continue with the install. And yes, I have tried using administrative credentials to no avail.

    It's not defective media as I have already used this disk to upgrade another system to Windows 10 (however, the other system was a HOME install, not a PRO install). Further to that I tried using this disk on another Win 7 Pro install and it worked without incident. So I know it has something to do with the system or Win 7 Pro install itself on this PC.

    When I try installing from boot it will not allow me to upgrade the current system - it tells me to boot into windows to complete an upgrade.

    Any ideas? I checked the system logs and there is no mention as to why the install is failing. I'd prefer to do an upgrade as opposed to a full install as I have a lot of configs and settings that would be a major PITA to redo.

    Thanks.
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 9
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       #9

    PaulS said:
    I had the same issue at first.

    Ended up being my Anti-Virus interfering with the validation check somehow.

    Disable your anti-virus, and try again.

    Hope that helps you out.
    Yep, I tried that as well. No go. I still think it has something to do with laptop and install of Win 7 itself because the other laptop I upgraded to Win 10 pro also had the same AV software on it.

    We had this problem in the past when upgrading from Win 8 to Win 8.1 and it took almost 10 technicians before it was resolved. I think at the end of the day they took the PC off the domain and ran it at bare minimum to get it installed. I tried the same techniques with this laptop but to no avail....taking it off the domain, logging in as local admin, shutting down all peripheral programs still resulted in the validation key failure message.
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 1
    windows 10
       #10

    brianp said:
    Yep, I tried that as well. No go. I still think it has something to do with laptop and install of Win 7 itself because the other laptop I upgraded to Win 10 pro also had the same AV software on it.

    We had this problem in the past when upgrading from Win 8 to Win 8.1 and it took almost 10 technicians before it was resolved. I think at the end of the day they took the PC off the domain and ran it at bare minimum to get it installed. I tried the same techniques with this laptop but to no avail....taking it off the domain, logging in as local admin, shutting down all peripheral programs still resulted in the validation key failure message.

    Your system may not meet the minimum requirements for the upgrade. I had installed from an insider build 10074 iso on an older laptop which has 2GB of ram but it is shared with video. The 64 bit iso installed fine but when windows update tried to update to the next build from within windows, it doesn't see the full 2 GB of memory so it gives the error that it doesn't meet reqirements. So I decided to try the 32 bit install (since it only has a 1GB requirement) from iso at boot and got the same message you got when trying to upgrade instead of clean install. So you may have the same issue, it won't update the 64 bit with 32bit and vice versa, it tells you to boot into windows to update. So at that point I tried a clean install and I get the same Failed to validate product key message, and no working key to use.
      My Computer


 

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