Windows 10: 4 year old laptop suddenly showing windows 10 is not activated

Have had a Dell laptop for 4 years, running Windows 10 and suddenly windows is showing as "not activated" and I cannot use Office.


The activation troubleshooter showed this error message:

"We found a Windows 10 Home digital license for this device running Windows 10 Home. To activate using this digital license, select upgrade your edition of Windows".


I called microsoft support and was told not to click on "upgrade" since that would lead me to purchase windows 10 Pro. Instead, click "change product key" and re-enter the windows product key.


When I did that I got the error message:

"Unable to activate Windows. Something interrupted our troubleshooting ........... try again. 0x80070002"


Have spent hours on the phone with microsoft support reinstalling different versions of windows 10. Cannot get it reactivated.


Does anyone have any other suggestions to fix this problem?

:)

 

Windows Activation on my old laptop

Hi deo.deo.1171

If I understand your question, you have an SSD with Windows 10 installed with a licence from that new laptop, which you have now put into an old laptop which has Windows 7 installed previously, is that correct?

If so, the free upgrade period to go from Windows 7 to Windows 10 elapsed 4 years ago, and most likely that will not self-activate on that old laptop

What you can try is, if there is a Windows 7 sticker on that old laptop, then try entering the product key from that sticker to activate Windows 10, that may work, a lot of users are able to do this . .

 

Insider laptop suddenly not activated

hello all,
today I suddenly noticed that my laptop is no longer activated... don't know what happened.
I found out that was using local account, but then I immediately switched back to microsoft account and still can not activate windows because I do not have valid digital license or valid product key.
If I click on solving problems then it is saying that product key can not be used with this version of Windows since they found Windows 10 Home digital license for this device.
Checking https://account.microsoft.com and my laptop is there listed with Windows 10 Professional OS as it always was.
Why and what happened and how to solve it ?
I do not have product key. The key is generic ending with 3V66T.

 

Using An Old Laptop For Backup

Hi,

I'm looking for suggestions on the best way to re-purpose an old laptop as an external backup medium.

Here is the current situation:

1. We have 4 Windows 10 laptops at home

2. I have an old (about 8 years) Windows 7 laptop

What are the options to use the old laptop for backup?

Thanks!