Windows 10: Why am I seeing "Activate Windows"?

I put my system to sleep while I made lunch. When I came back I saw a message at lower right corner saying "Activate Windows - Go to Settings to activate Windows."

Needless to say I have never seen this before. Settings said to run the Activation Troubleshoot program. I did. IT said it could not activate my Windows and I should go to the Windows Store to buy a license.

Is this some sort of obscure virus? The Windows Home web page says "Something happened and we couldn't make your copy of Windows genuine."

:)

 

Why AM I seeing something after MSN France: Hotmail, Outlook, actualités, météo, divertissement

It might be a safe and valid MSN link, but I do know that when I am on it, I am unable to bring up msn games and my Hotmail account.

 

Why AM I seeing something after MSN France: Hotmail, Outlook, actualités, météo, divertissement

Hello Joseph,

The extension part of the URL is automatically added as part of site redirection. I mean, when you type
MSN France: Hotmail, Outlook, actualités, météo, divertissement and hit Enter key, it will automatically take the extension part to redirect you to the MSN site according to the region. For instance, if the site is accessed from India,
then it redirects to
http://www.msn.com/en-in/ . In view of the same, extension part will changes according to region or from the location you're accessing the website.

Hope this will address your query. Let us know if you require any other information on this.

 

Never mind - I finally got in touch with an MS tech who took a look at my system via remote link and decided to just reinstall Windows. So he downloaded the Media Creation Kit and ran it with the reinstall option. This worked OK.

Apparently when they encounter a weird problem like this they no longer try to diagnose/fix it, but just opt to reinstall. That's what I'll do should anything like this happen again.