Windows 10: Can't activate Windows after replacing a hard drive and re-installing - Never hear back...

I've reinstalled Windows 11 on my PC after replacing a failed HDD and now I can't activate Windows. I skipped adding a product key during installation as instructed on the MS website due to having a digital licence and once I was able to boot into Windows it wouldn't let me activate it. I clicked the "Recently changed hardware" button and went through that and selected my PC. I was then greeted with a message saying I couldn't activate Windows because the digital licence had already been used to activate Windows... Well yes, of course it's already been used to activate Windows because it was w

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Replacing old hard drive, need way to copy Windows installation across

Hey Guys,
What would be the best way of copying/imaging the entire contents of an old system drive over to a replacement hard disk for the same machine? I need to copy the Windows installations and all other data to the new drive, and then format the old drive to use as a backup.

Any suggestions? *Smile

 

Hard drive/ OS issue

a guy suggested :

• shutdown
• unhooked HDD
• restarted
• yay !!
• reconnected HDD
• restarted
• yay !!

also , try method 3
How to Unlock Drive in Windows 10: 5 Ways to Remove a Lock

 

Can't get replacement hard drive to boot

The boot sector on my Windows 10 HP ProBook 650 laptop went bad. I purchased a replacement 1 TB hard drive, connect it to my laptop with a SATA to USB cable, set up partitions identical to those on my laptop and used xcopy to copy my files to their corresponding partitions on the new drive and set the partition to "active" and installed it in the laptop. When I power it up, it will not boot. I have followed various troubleshooting steps I found online but none worked. Can anyone suggest some possible solutions? Thanks DH