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?
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?