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Dead mobo, can't reactivate Win10 on new board.

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So, right around the Windows 8 release, Windows went to a system of only reading the BIOS for the key. With Windows 10, Windows went to a system of storing a fingerprint remotely, only leaving a generic key in the OS.

So the "key" for your Windows 8 install is/was in the BIOS of your old board, and the key for your upgrade was married to the configuration with your old board.

To put it another way, in this case, you are "attached to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis".
 
Well, the activation troubleshooter was doing something stupid earlier. First it said there was system maintenance going on. Tried to run again a half hour later and it just hung forever.

My friend ran that again when he got home and it activated!
 
Ketchup said:
That is interesting, and very good news for those of us who have to swap broken parts if true.
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I figure maybe there were enough of the same components for it to be recognized (HDD, CPU, memory modules, etc), even though that wasn't good enough for previous versions of Windows. I hope that's why.
 
It's good to know your friend got it to activate again, but for future reference, scrap pc keys can be had on ebay for about $8.
 
Ketchup said:
The original board is dead. Please read the thread.
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No kidding but if you have a board and want the key from bios the instructions are there so get off your high horse. Somebody else might need to extract it for safe keeping and it tells them how to do it so they don't end up in the same situation.
 
I read the article. Did you read the comment from JCR? Long story short, Windows 10 replaced his OEM key with its own generic key, so these programs are not going to find a key that is no longer there.
 
Ketchup said:
I read the article. Did you read the comment from JCR? Long story short, Windows 10 replaced his OEM key with its own generic key, so these programs are not going to find a key that is no longer there.
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No brother, you need your 7-8 key for when you want to upgrade to 10 on a clean install without a previous activation on that particular hardware which is still possible. For laptops that key is buried in the bios. Once you get 10 installed on your hardware then you no longer need a key for that hardware and yes we all have a set of generic keys on our activated pc's. I for one am glad to be done with worrying about keys on my 10 activated pc's but I do have valid keys for previous operating systems that I could use to do a clean install on a new pc where 10 was never activated before. I'm saving a copy of 7 ult for my next build for that purpose unless MS actually clamps down and then I've got 10 EDU to use.
 
I find it odd there would be this kind of issue unless there were activation server issues - If you login to a Microsoft account, it associates that key/install with your account.

I swapped my motherboard and it didn't auto-activate when I installed Windows as it had previously. All I did was login to my Microsoft account and tell it what computer it was supposed to be and it activated instantly.

I suppose it's possible he had never associated a Microsoft account with his computer, though.
 
XabanakFanatik said:
I find it odd there would be this kind of issue unless there were activation server issues - If you login to a Microsoft account, it associates that key/install with your account.

I swapped my motherboard and it didn't auto-activate when I installed Windows as it had previously. All I did was login to my Microsoft account and tell it what computer it was supposed to be and it activated instantly.

I suppose it's possible he had never associated a Microsoft account with his computer, though.
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This is what I did too when I swapped motherboards. The install I created on my PC didn't even ask for a key. Once windows was loaded it told me it was not active. But after signing in to my Outlook it activated fine.
 
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