Activation

MrPig · Aug 8, 2024

Here's a question:

How much can you change hardware wise before Win 11 complains your activation is not valid or requires a new license?

Unplugged a USB WiFi antenna & took out a USB expansion card & my license was not valid! Put it back & all good!

pparks1 · Aug 8, 2024

It's not that you need a new license, but you may need to place a call with Microsoft and explain that your hardware changed a bit and they should help you get it reactivated.

MrPig · Aug 8, 2024

There is an option to press a button if you have changed hardware but nothing happened.
Motherboard/CPU/hard drive I can understand but trivial items, what!!

cyberrufus · Aug 8, 2024

Change in motherboard is the only time I've encountered activation issues.

Bree · Aug 8, 2024

MrPig said:
How much can you change hardware wise before Win 11 complains your activation is not valid or requires a new license?

This is a detailed explanation of how Windows 10/11 digital licensing works.

Windows 10 and Windows 11 Digital Licencing explained

Windows 10 / 11 Digital License explained The number of Windows 10 licensing and activation questions around the tech forums started to grow exponentially when Windows 7 hit its End of Life date. Users keep asking about how to find their Windows 10 or 11 product key after upgrading from...

www.elevenforum.com

Bree · Aug 8, 2024

MrPig said:
There is an option to press a button if you have changed hardware but nothing happened.
Motherboard/CPU/hard drive I can understand but trivial items, what!!

If you have made a substantial hardware change then you can use the Activation Troubleshooter to re-activate, telling it that 'I recently changed hardware on this device'. This can only work though if you were signing into your PC with your Microsoft Account. I have used this successfully when I really had made significant changes.

can-reactivate-windows-servers-available-png.83912

My PC is activated with my ms account, but it has disappeared from the list on line management of devices - post#20

MrPig · Aug 18, 2024

Mysteriously it re-activated the following day!

However, Gigabyte released a firmware update for my mobo (applied) & now Windows is asking for activation!
Go through the process & it claims the key is used on another machine. Go to MS account & I have two identical PC's, I assume it registered the firmware changed device as a new entry?
I deleted one & back to the activation process & there is no PC in my MS account linked to this PC.
Try the "I changed hardware" routine & it goes through a remote activation procedure after asking a slew of questions & I get the unexpected error message.
According to MS you cannot activate, over the phone, Win Pro for Workstation! So what next?

Megahertz · Aug 18, 2024

What I found out is that the activation is mainly tied to the LAN MAC address.
If you disabled LAN and used a WIFI during activation it will use the WIFI MAC address.

If you want to confirm, disable LAN on BIOS. I would say once booted your Windows will be deactivated.

MrPig · Aug 19, 2024

That made no difference.

jimbo45 · Aug 19, 2024

Bree said:
If you have made a substantial hardware change then you can use the Activation Troubleshooter to re-activate, telling it that 'I recently changed hardware on this device'. This can only work though if you were signing into your PC with your Microsoft Account. I have used this successfully when I really had made significant changes.

My PC is activated with my ms account, but it has disappeared from the list on line management of devices - post#20

Sometimes just re-entering the product code just works.

Cheers
jimbo

MrPig · Aug 19, 2024

Tried all of that. Get "unexpected error" or "the servers are unavailable".
Will try & contact somebody & pester them for an answer.

Bree · Aug 19, 2024

MrPig said:
Tried all of that. Get "unexpected error" or "the servers are unavailable".
Will try & contact somebody & pester them for an answer.

Sometimes the servers are genuinely unavailable. I've seen that too, but the next day it worked.

Bree said:
Bree said:

I clicked on 'I recently changed hardware on this device'. This failed. The reason given was that the servers that would transfer a digital licence to the new hardware were not available....

Click to expand...

....and today they were available

Lost Activation win11 pro - post #93

spapakons · Aug 19, 2024

MrPig said:
Mysteriously it re-activated the following day!

However, Gigabyte released a firmware update for my mobo (applied) & now Windows is asking for activation!
Go through the process & it claims the key is used on another machine. Go to MS account & I have two identical PC's, I assume it registered the firmware changed device as a new entry?
I deleted one & back to the activation process & there is no PC in my MS account linked to this PC.
Try the "I changed hardware" routine & it goes through a remote activation procedure after asking a slew of questions & I get the unexpected error message.
According to MS you cannot activate, over the phone, Win Pro for Workstation! So what next?

You may not be able to activate Windows 11 Pro for Workstations using the automatic activator over phone, but you should be able to connect to a Microsoft representative to guide you what to do. Just press the respective option or press a wrong option several times.