Lost Activation win11 pro

Did you changed the LAN or WiFi hardware?

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No, just unplug the rj45 from the back panel of one machine and plug it into the back panel of the other. I have always done that.

The same with power lead to pc and hdmi cable from back panel of pc to the monitor. Then just the mouse and keyboard into the front panel usb2 ports. Only takes a few seconds.

Typical hardware changes on my those Windows 11 Pro PCs
Laptop: RAM and Storage
Desktop: RAM, Storage, Graphics, KB/mouse, , ,

PS change is seldom.

But when swapping between PCs, should count on, PS, motherboard, , , all changed. Anyway, I am bracing myself for this new MSFT activation policy.

I expect if you want a "universal" image the trick is to sysprep generalise before capturing the image.

%windir%\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown

To the best of my knowledge, that makes it forget it was on a different pc so you shouldnt have the "hardware change" problem

then boot into another os or some kind of pe and capture it with your preferred program.

Hopefully MS will fix this whoopsie they made, it was reported quite a while ago.

cereberus said:

You do not need a spare drive - anybody can clean install in a virtual hard drive, and add a boot entry.

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Yes, throughout this thread I have been testing activation of a Windows 10 install and a Windows 11 install, moving them from one machine to another to see if they would activate with each PC's own digital licence So far they have always activated.

The fastest and easiest way to do this was to have each OS as a vhdx file on an external usb SSD, then add a boot entry on each test PC to native boot from the external SSD. This avoided doing anything to each PC's own installed OS. Native boot doesn't care if the vhdx is on an external drive, and if that external drive is an SSD it is almost as fast as using an internal drive.

The real challenge was the third PC I tested this on for post #30. That one only had Windows 7 as its installed OS. Did you know that W7 supports native boot? No, neither did I until today. There are two differences. One is that it requires a vhd file as W7 doesn't support vhdx. The second is that the only way I could find to mount a vhd in W7 (necessary before using the bcdboot command) was through Diskpart. To convert my vhdx files to vhd I used: Convert-VHD (Hyper-V)

Bree said:

Did you know that W7 supports native boot? No, neither did I until today. There are two differences. One is that it requires a vhd file as W7 doesn't support vhdx. The second is that the only way I could find to mount a vhd in W7 (necessary before using the bcdboot command) was through Diskpart. To convert my vhdx files to vhd I used: Convert-VHD (Hyper-V)

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I have done that in the past - many years ago.

From memory (admittedly a bit rusty), I think you can attach vhd files in Windows 7 from disk management as well.

cereberus said:

From memory (admittedly a bit rusty), I think you can attach vhd files in Windows 7 from disk management as well.

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You memory does you proud. Yes, I have since found out that is the other way. So much easier now we can just double-click in explorer

I have thought this MSFT change awhile.
It's a long-term concern, MSFT will shutoff user's computer any time if MSFT will.
Any windows version requesting online registration/activation will have this risk. Presently, Windows 10/11 will.

I have decided to keep my Windows 7 longer time. Windows 7 requests activation but its online activation is NOT necessary, at least those manufactured PCs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, , ,).

SIW2 said:

I expect if you want a "universal" image the trick is to sysprep generalise before capturing the image.

%windir%\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown

To the best of my knowledge, that makes it forget it was on a different pc so you shouldnt have the "hardware change" problem

then boot into another os or some kind of pe and capture it with your preferred program.

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Sysprepping will not change the mobo HARDWARE ids which are tied to the digital licences. It is the change of the hardware ID not software drivers that trigger the hardware change message.

Sysprepping will not change the mobo HARDWARE ids which are tied to the digital licences.

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Nobody is suggesting it does.

There has been no hardware change on either of my machines ( unless you count the psu on one of them)

It is because the os that was installed and activated on one machine was moved to a different machine by moving the disk from one machine to another.

When the os booted up it realized it was now on a different machine, which is why it declared "hardware change".

Had the os been generalized before the move it would not know what machine it was previously on, therefore no declaration of "hardware change"

and no complication with previously obtained free upgrade activation as discussed in the linked articles.

I have done exactly the same thing several times before and the os would always fetch the previously obtained free upgrade activation for whichever machine it was now on..

As stated in the articles, the difficulty has only happened since ms stopped the free upgrade activations.

Probably unintentionally the "hardware change" declaration prevented previously obtained free upgrade activations on my machines. They are now both deactivated.

And it looks like they have gorn.

A subsequent clean install has not been on a machine before, so it obviously doesn't declare "hardware change". But it is now unable to fetch the previously obtained free upgrade activation.

We've had several "lost activation " threads recently.

SIW2 said:

The logical conclusion is that the upgrade activation will not now survive a hardware change, though it previously did

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The hardware change rule has been in MS terms of service for as long as I can remember,but was not always enforced. Years ago, I always ran into an activation issue if the mobo was changed, a time or two if the cpu was changed, but usually activation would not be lost if ram or system drive was changed separately, but would trigger re-activation if those two were changed at the same time. Every time when I called MS, the rep was lenient enough to allow activation.

I agree @SIW2 . I think MS has now made that a firm rule. I if MS is now enforcing this rule, moving a drive from one machine to the other is now considered a hardware change. I'll go one step further and say I think this is the beginning of ways that MS is going to gradually weed out older machines that don't meet their requirements and have no underlying licenses in UEFI. Those of you who run 11 on these machines would definitely know more than me about that, though. I've never done it.

But disregarding any hardware change, recently we had a poster whose machine had no key stored in UEFI. His machine used a local account and had been upgraded from 7 to 10 to 11. He got his digital license from the 7 key when he upgraded from 7 to 10..
When he did a clean install, his license de-activated. He could not reactivate with his 7 key which was the only key he had. He had to purchase a 11 license.

We had another poster with the same situation who used a local account. He did a repair install and lost activation.
So was this a fluke? Would it have made a difference if either of those posters had used a MS account and had his digital license key stored in his account? I don't know. I'm just asking for opinions.

glasskuter said:

The hardware change rule has been in MS terms of service for as long as I can remember,but was not always enforced. Years ago, I always ran into an activation issue if the mobo was changed, a time or two if the cpu was changed, but usually activation would not be lost if ram or system drive was changed separately, but would trigger re-activation if those two were changed at the same time. Every time when I called MS, the rep was lenient enough to allow activation.

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A significant hardware change will change the hardware ID of the machine, and it is this which looses the activation. The PC's new hardware ID is not linked to any digital licence. It always used to be that signing in with your MS account would re-establish the digital licence, or failing that use the activation troubleshooter. It is this mechanism that has been broken since MS turned of the free activation of 7/8/8.1 keys.

glasskuter said:

But disregarding any hardware change, recently we had a poster whose machine had no key stored in UEFI. His machine used a local account and had been upgraded from 7 to 10 to 11. He got his digital license from the 7 key when he upgraded from 7 to 10..
When he did a clean install, his license de-activated. He could not reactivate with his 7 key which was the only key he had. He had to purchase a 11 license.

We had another poster with the same situation who used a local account. He did a repair install and lost activation.
So was this a fluke?

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I have now tested moving both a W10 and a W11 system image to three different laptops. So that's six times I have seen it say 'hardware changed', and six times has Windows then activated from the new PC's own digital licence. This is a quite different mechanism from the above, and does not seem to have been broken. I'm fast running out of PCs to test this on

@SIW2, please confirm:
- The computer is the i5-8400 on your computer specs.
- You did a Win 10 clean install using a Win 7 COA key to activate it.
- You then upgraded to Win 11

bobkn said:

PSU change?

I don't believe it.

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PSUs don't have IDs. All the conductors have, are the voltage buses. I'd believe this if it were a laptop, or if it's from Apple.

It would have to at least be a drive change, a BIOS change or a CPU change, maybe the same with a RAM change.

Bree said:

A significant hardware change will change the hardware ID of the machine, and it is this which looses the activation. The PC's new hardware ID is not linked to any digital licence. It always used to be that signing in with your MS account would re-establish the digital licence, or failing that use the activation troubleshooter. It is this mechanism that has been broken since MS turned of the free activation of 7/8/8.1 keys.


I have now tested moving both a W10 and a W11 system image to three different laptops. So that's six times I have seen it say 'hardware changed', and six times has Windows then activated from the new PC's own digital licence. This is a quite different mechanism from the above, and does not seem to have been broken. I'm fast running out of PCs to test this on

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This happens, because it failed to update the digital license information on the Microsoft account. Saw this BS before on June 14, 2022, IIRC. I didn't even flash the BIOS, IIRC, LOL.

For me, the troubleshooter seemed to have resulted in successful update to the Microsoft account, as the panel suddenly, to my happiness, said "We activated your device" or similar.

RJARRRPCGP said:

It would have to at least be a drive change, a BIOS change or a CPU change, maybe the same with a RAM change.

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No, not a drive change. That is specifically excluded from the hardware ID.

Kari said:

all HWIDs exclude storage media entirely. Thus, on a PC with Windows 10 or 11 activated, you can replace its storage (HDD / SSD) devices with one or more new ones and clean install Windows 10 or 11 on a new disk. Even so, the PC will activate automatically based on that machine’s existing digital license.

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Bree said:

No, not a drive change. That is specifically excluded from the hardware ID.

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That's what happened to me, IIRC! I upgraded the SSD, then got punished! As if it thinks it's XP! It said that it punished me for not entering the product key, and also a hardware change, very XP-esque, if you ask me! It happened in 2022. Dunno why! It never happened to me in 2020 nor in 2021, IIRC.

It happened on a clean install. Windows 11 seemed to throw an incorrect error message for no good reason.

I can confirm that I don't have a dodgy license, as I got a Windows 10 license in 2019 from Staples and started using it on January 3, 2020.

Because this was a license for Windows 10 in 2019, much much less a Windows 7 product key!

Megahertz said:

@SIW2, please confirm:
- The computer is the i5-8400 on your computer specs.
- You did a Win 10 clean install using a Win 7 COA key to activate it.
- You then upgraded to Win 11

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One machine is i5-8400 cpu and b365m-ds3h mobo
Other machine is g5400 cpu and b365m-ds3h mobo
Activation Retail win7>win10>win11
No COA and no DM key, they are both consumer motherboards

I told him I had swapped the os disk to a different machine and it had always activated automatically when I had done it before. He said yes but that was when they were allowing previous os keys to be used and that has changed now. He suggested if it was linked to ms acount he would be able to help. But without activation linked to ms account he couldn't help.

That might mean if he could find the activation in ms account he would be able to get around the problem by giving a long list of numbers over the phone. Possibly that is what they are doing now they are aware of the problem

SIW2 said:

He suggested if it was linked to ms acount he would be able to help. But without activation linked to ms account he couldn't help.

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That what I suspected for older devices. If a device does not have an underlying key stored in UEFI, it's all boils down to the damned MS account now if MS servers detect any change.

It is nothing to do with the age of device.

oem dm keys in firmware come with oem motherboards.

consumer motherboards do not have them

even the most recent z790 motherboards from asus, gigabyte, msi etc that you buy from Amazon or Scan or wherever, do not have oem dm in the firmware

Some small oems ( e.g. pcspecialist ) do not have the wherewithal to have the hardware manufactured for them , so they buy from the known brands and have a special thing from from ms that inserts the firmware key. You might come across a machine from pcspecialist prebuilt office range that has a known brand motherboard and a firmware key. But consumers cant buy those separately.