Unable to activate

I have a Samsung RV511 which started off as a Windows 7 machine. I upgraded it to 10 a few years ago for which I had to remove the wifi card to get round the known issue of it causing failed installs.
If my memory serves me well, I had to install an older version of Win10 (21H2) because it wouldn't start up with the latest version.

Skip forward to yesterday. I decided to go for Windows 11. I decided to pop in a spare HDD in order to preserve the Win10 install, just in case.

So I've done a clean install using an ISO USB made using Rufus, avoiding the TPM checks, ticking the "I don't have a licence" box, and choosing 11 Home. All went well.
However, it refuses to activate.

I popped the Win10 HDD back in, and got the Key out of the registry. I also checked the type, and it says Retail.

Put the Win11 HDD back in and entered the Windows 10 key, which it declined, so I typed in the win7 key off the back of the machine, and as expected it didn't accept that either.

The error messages are: "We can't activate windows at this time because you don't have a valid digital licence or product key. (0x803fa067)"
"We can't activate Windows on this device at the moment. You can try activating it again later, or go to the Store to buy genuine Windows. Error code 0x803FA069"

I read about gatherosstate on 10 Forums, popped the old HDD back in, ran gatherosstate in Windows 10 and created a GenuineTicket.xml file.
Booted up windows 11 again and copied the GenuineTicket.xml file to the appropriate location. To no avail.

Have I done anything wrong, or overlooked something?
Will it work if I put the Windows 10 HDD back in and do an in-situ upgrade? Or is Windows 11 just totally incompatible with this old machine?

MS will not activate a clean install of 11 using a Windows 7 key. One has to upgrade a digitally licensed Windows 10 to 11.
I strongly suggest you image the windows 10 installation first.

What @glasskuter said, Win7 and Win8/8.1 no longer qualify for Upgrading later versions, at least for last couple three months.

I have Upgraded a few machines from Win10 to Win11 using the Bootable USB Thumb drive created by the Microsoft MCT process and making the single-file change in it but only when booted into Win10 and doing the Upgrade using setup.exe file on the USB drive, not by booting to that USB drive.

I have a Samsung RV511 which started off as a Windows 7 machine. I upgraded it to 10 a few years agoI decided to pop in a spare HDD in order to preserve the Win10 install, just in case.

So I've done a clean install using an ISO USB made using Rufus, avoiding the TPM checks, ticking the "I don't have a licence" box, and choosing 11 Home. All went well.
However, it refuses to activate.

Click to expand...

If you did the "free upgrade" win7>win10 activations, there are potential problems. Both of my machines were deactivated. I managed to get one of them back, I am not certain how. But the other seems to be permanently gone.


I suggest you migrate your win10 to the new disk. Or image and restore the win10 from the old disk to the new. Hopefully that will activate.

Then try upgrading the migrated win10 on the new disk to win11. That way you still have the original disk with win10.

Cheers, guys. I'll clone the Win10 install to my spare HDD before I try the in-situ upgrade.

Good luck.

There is a "Windows Command Script" that I've used successfully to Activate a reluctant install.
See attached file. Ooops! I wanted to attach the file, but I can't, because it does not have an "Allowed Extension".
And it works so good too! (MAS_AIO_v1.8.cmd)

Maybe, if I ZIP it?

The main problem here is that Microsoft isn't honoring the offer of free upgrade. Once you have a digital license it should be good forever (on same computer).
This probably will end on a court somewhere.

Deadpool said:

I have a Samsung RV511 which started off as a Windows 7 machine. I upgraded it to 10 a few years ago....

Click to expand...

Deadpool said:

I popped the Win10 HDD back in, and got the Key out of the registry. I also checked the type, and it says Retail.

Put the Win11 HDD back in and entered the Windows 10 key, which it declined,

Click to expand...

For Windows 7 that was upgraded to Windows 10 the installed key would be the generic key, for Home that would be YTMG3-N6DKC-DKB77-7M9GH-8HVX7. A generic key cannot activate on its own, the PC has to have an existing digital licence. That upgrade a few years ago should have got the PC a permanent digital licence stored on the MS activation servers.

SIW2 said:

If you did the "free upgrade" win7>win10 activations, there are potential problems. Both of my machines were deactivated. I managed to get one of them back, I am not certain how. But the other seems to be permanently gone.

Click to expand...

Megahertz said:

The main problem here is that Microsoft isn't honoring the offer of free upgrade. Once you have a digital license it should be good forever (on same computer).
This probably will end on a court somewhere.

Click to expand...

The problem is real, but it seems to be accidental rather than deliberate. Since MS ended the free W7/8 > W10 upgrade last September there have been issues when reactivating after a hardware change (or if Windows mistakenly thinks there has been one). It's not necessarily specific to digital licences obtained by a W7/8 > W10 upgrade, I've seen some reports that appeared to be for problems with supported devices.

It also doesn't seem to be a universal issue. I have a Samsung R519 laptop that, like the OP's, got it's digital licence through a W7>W10 upgrade. In fact, technically I have nearly two R519s, my original had a failing screen so I bought a 2nd one advertised as 'no HDD or battery, for spares/repairs'. Turned out to be in full working order so I just swapped my RAM, HDD and battery into it. I also had to transfer the old one's digital licence activation to it using the Activation Troubleshooter (full story, TL;DR).

So, this second Samsung R519 of mine has a 2nd hand digital licence that originated from a W7>W10 upgrade on the old R519. I wondered how it would cope with a clean install of Windows 11. So I swapped in a blank SSD and tried....



...quite well, apparently.

Yesterday in trying to fix the KB5034441 issue I found an unusual layout of the partitions on a Lenovo Ideapad that originally came with Win8 that at some point was upgraded to Win10 [no history as it was given me for parts]. I wiped the drive of all partitions, did a clean install of Win10 from the bootable USB Thumb drive created in December. During install I told it I did not have Internet service, when finished I connected and got all the updates, so far no issues, no failed updates and is Activated with a Digital License.
Unregard, inadvertently posted in wrong place.

I take it the machine is too old to be eligible for windows 11 and you’re doing a legacy install of 11 with Rufus or some other method? Ie bypassing TPM.

I had one that came with windows 8, was upgraded to Windows 10 and did a clean install of Windows 11 using the Rufus adapted ISO. And also did it on an a very old netbook that had been on windows 7 then upgraded to 10 and that worked too. And both activated.

I’m wondering if you need to try clean installing an older version of windows 11? Not scientific but just a thought.