Recently had to chat with MS online tech to reactivate, tell me why?

alphanumeric said:

If you run showkey, and then click on the product codes displayed, that will X out all but the last 5 digits. Once you do that you can safely upload a screen shoot using the snipping tool.

A lot of those key finder utilities pull the key from the Windows registry. That key may or may not be the Key stored in the BIOS, if there is one. Showkey will retrieve the OEM embedded key from the BIOS, and show you the key that's actually in use. The generic key that you normally get with a Digital License for 10 Pro ends in 3V66t. I don't recognise either of the keys you posted. If one or both are OEM or Retail keys that would explain that though.

since the pc came preinstalled vista is oem key?
testing key withshowkey, claims its invalid.?

alphanumeric said:

Looking over things again, I noticed the troubleshooter said it found a DL for 10 Pro for that PC, and to use that DL you need to install 10 Pro. Only 10 Pro was installed, it says 10 Pro on the activation screen in your screen shot? Best guess is when you slaved that second drive in, your current Windows 10 Pro install got corrupted and wasn't detected as 10 Pro? Something like that? Or the mangled files broke activation?

Somehow that WDC drive made a mess of things, but there was no win10 on it, just a priorly cloned copy of win7 and ubuntu. My plan had been to clone win10 onto that drive as a backup.

And I have the drive in the PC right now with a failed win10 clone. Macrium failed in its clone. That is when all hhh broke loose:), at 97%, PC popped up message saying need to activate, clone failed, PC rebooted, had driver status error twice, took literally forever to boot, and when it finally did my TV tuner program was wiped, as if the OS had lost configurations.

I bought the MB used. It had vista OEM from factory I suppose. I installed win7 ultimate. Used for years.
Then I took advantage of the last gasp of win10 upgrade.

alphanumeric said:

If I google XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-WB6GC I get hits indicating its a Windows 10 Phone Activation MAK-Retail key.
If that's true one of two things has happened. The Microsoft tech used that key to get you activated again, legal.
Or that key was originally used to illegally activate your system. That's how it looks to me anyway. I'm no expert on this though.

Interesting, maybe it is a retail key I have now for win10 pro!

Superfly said:

That is a generic OEM key - I got it as well.



Not sure why it shows as invalid on your PC...

it did when I copied it in and tested it.
EDIT no longer says invalid:)

I am just happy the OS is working active and all.
I am sure MS lady knew how to fix, she looked at it all online, and said she would fix it immediately, and she did, and she said would never happen again.

alphanumeric said:

I'm not sure what's going on now, maybe Google got it wrong? I'm thinking that WB6GC key is one the Microsoft tech used to get you activated?

Who knows, I certainly dont have much knowledge about any of this. I assume the key she used differed from what was there originally, cause she generated it , and pasted it in under change product key. I have had MS online account a long time, I have some kind of history with MS I suppose.

She must have seen it used to be activated which it was. Adding that hard drive caused it to blow up!