Windows 10 Upgrade - Failed to Validate Product Key

JoeyD123 said:

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.

I don't think this is the case. The laptop on which the upgrade is being done is a Dell E6520 laptop that has an i7 processor, 8GB of ram and an independent NVidia video card. If that doesn't meet the Win 10 minimum requirements then I don't know what would.

Borg 386 said:

I attempted to upgrade mine with a disk & it also would not activate. Doing some searching I discovered the only way it will activate is if you choose the "update this computer" option from the MS Downloader. I uninstalled 10, reinstalled using that method & then it activated.

Do you mean using the tool found on this page:

Windows 10

If so then, yeah....same result...it tells me it failed to validate the key.

Borg 386 said:

That's it, if you try to use a disk to upgrade the OS, it fails to register the product. If you check "update this PC", then it d/l's & it shows up as registered, that's what it did on mine. There's a tutorial here that might help you:

Windows 10 - Upgrade Installation - Windows 10 Forums

Thanks for the help, but nada.....I uninstalled my AV and tried every single step listed in the tutorial to no avail....whether I use the manager, try to install from ISO or try to install from a folder on my system I still keep getting the same error.

This is bordering on lunacy....I mean, it shouldn't be rocket science to install a freakin' upgrade!

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".

Thanks.

This tells me you're upgrading a "work" computer that likely your internal IT staff "securitized".

I had this "Something happened" problem upgrading a win7 pro system with the Release version of Win10. I know the ISO was good because I used the same disc to update multiple systems. In my case I was using the disc on the win7 system prior to "registering" the system for the upgrade via the popup notification that appeared in the tray. So for the heck of it, I accepted the notification and waited for Windows Update to download win10. So I left the system on and waited.


After a couple of days when Windows Update notified me it was ready to apply the update, after making me uninstall McAfee Enterprise as Incompatible, I got one of those 6-8 digit error codes from Windows Update telling me the update failed. Sorry, I can't find the the code. Regardless, searching on the code indicated it was an error because I didn't have Full Control access to Drive C. This was odd, because I was using an account which was in the Administrators group, but it wasn't the default Administrator account. But I did verify in Drive C Security settings that I didn't have Full Control. So I fixed that. But then I also switched back to the default Administrator account which had been disabled by our internal IT staff. Then the update applied and Win10 successfully installed. So I suspect that this issue was caused by one of the STIGS that our IT staff applied.


I did not re-attempt using the ISO after changing the Drive C security settings. Having switched to the default Administrators account not only bypassed the Full Control issue, but any potential drive Ownership issues.


Lessons learned:


1) Not all Administrator accounts are equal.

rhfritz said:

This tells me you're upgrading a "work" computer that likely your internal IT staff "securitized".

I had this "Something happened" problem upgrading a win7 pro system with the Release version of Win10. I know the ISO was good because I used the same disc to update multiple systems. In my case I was using the disc on the win7 system prior to "registering" the system for the upgrade via the popup notification that appeared in the tray. So for the heck of it, I accepted the notification and waited for Windows Update to download win10. So I left the system on and waited.


After a couple of days when Windows Update notified me it was ready to apply the update, after making me uninstall McAfee Enterprise as Incompatible, I got one of those 6-8 digit error codes from Windows Update telling me the update failed. Sorry, I can't find the the code. Regardless, searching on the code indicated it was an error because I didn't have Full Control access to Drive C. This was odd, because I was using an account which was in the Administrators group, but it wasn't the default Administrator account. But I did verify in Drive C Security settings that I didn't have Full Control. So I fixed that. But then I also switched back to the default Administrator account which had been disabled by our internal IT staff. Then the update applied and Win10 successfully installed. So I suspect that this issue was caused by one of the STIGS that our IT staff applied.


I did not re-attempt using the ISO after changing the Drive C security settings. Having switched to the default Administrators account not only bypassed the Full Control issue, but any potential drive Ownership issues.


Lessons learned:


1) Not all Administrator accounts are equal.

Having same problem with systems attached to Active Directory domain. If I log on as Domain admin the upgrade works fine. If I try to upgrade using local administrator or domain user, the upgrade fails with message 'unable to validate product key'. This appears to be some sort of permissions issue. Does anyone know what privileges the users needs in AD in order to run the upgrade?

I'm having the same problem. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, the Windows 10 pre-check is green, I've tried updating to 10 using Windows Update, the Media Creation Tool and Techbench. I following the instructions very carefully on Techbench, I've verified that my version shows that it is fully licensed for Windows 7 Pro using slmgr /dlv, fully updated 7, disabled my AV, created a new Admin account to run the update, I still get Windows 10 Update Something Happened Setup has failed to validate the product key. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

PaulJ said:

I'm having the same problem. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, the Windows 10 pre-check is green, I've tried updating to 10 using Windows Update, the Media Creation Tool and Techbench. I following the instructions very carefully on Techbench, I've verified that my version shows that it is fully licensed for Windows 7 Pro using slmgr /dlv, fully updated 7, disabled my AV, created a new Admin account to run the update, I still get Windows 10 Update Something Happened Setup has failed to validate the product key. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You might want to reset your PC under Advanced Startup


*From the start menu, choose the power icon

*Hold down shift and choose to restart

*Hold shift until a blue screen pops up with icons. Select Troubleshoot

*Choose Reset this PC and choose to save your files; I did and the reset worked just fine

*Follow prompts and your computer should work again!