Struggling to Activate Win10 after identical motherboard replacement.

BreezyKun

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Oct 4, 2016
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Two weeks ago, my motherboard bit the dust. After looking into replacements I realized it would be easiest to just seek out an identical replacement. The only notable difference between the two is that my replacement is Revision 1.2 while the broken one seems to be the original.

I brought the PC to Fry's for diagnosis and re-installation, and everything works fine, but I need to activate windows. Letting the activation program run it's course does nothing, and upon seeking further options I realize I didn't have my microsoft account directly linked to this machine until now either. Thus, there are no 'other devices' to activate this one with.

I call Microsoft's US activation center and they ask for a product key, but this is a custom build I got from iBuyPower back in 2012, so there's no product key sticker anywhere on it. Not only that, but Win10 was a free upgrade; the machine came with Win7.

iBuyPower's phone lines are closed today since it's Thanksgiving and the only thing I've got physically in terms of identifying the machine is a serial number on a sticker that seems to be from iBP. I'll try calling them tomorrow, but in the meantime is there anything I can do?
 
Solution


just go threw the steps on the link i sent you. if you have an MS account it will ask you to log into it during the process.

after the big anniversary update in the summer MS changed the rules for hardware changes where now you can make major hardware changes a certain number of times but you had to tie it to a MS account. the old rules would invalidate your windows 10 licence if you changed something major like a...

BreezyKun

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Oct 4, 2016
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4,530


Fully updated, yes. Linked with a microsoft account? Until now, I dont think I have.
 


just go threw the steps on the link i sent you. if you have an MS account it will ask you to log into it during the process.

after the big anniversary update in the summer MS changed the rules for hardware changes where now you can make major hardware changes a certain number of times but you had to tie it to a MS account. the old rules would invalidate your windows 10 licence if you changed something major like a motherboard

 
Solution

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