Windows 10: Win 10 activation is expiring - volume license

Maybe I missed something. Are you saying all you did was enter the Win7 key a second time and it worked?

I just tried it again and I had internet connected.
But I get the same error message. saying I have the wrong key.





you can see it says this key can't be used and that this windows installation was activated with your company's activation service.

I wonder if the guy I bought this from is an IT guy and he is installing Win 10 Pro on old Win 7 laptops and activating them at is work.

by the way. I found him on ebay. He is still selling them just like I bought. Has one for sale right now that says Win 10 Pro installed. same model Dell I have.

 

Yes the Win 7 COA key activated both a VL and Retail installed VM - the latter 1st time.

The Product ID in your screen shot is of the generic 10 Pro key btw. 7 keys won't show up in 10.

If the seller is untrustworthy that Win 7 key may be doing the rounds as well, who knows...

Have you checked the Win 7 key in ShowKeyPlus as I asked?

 

Yes, I ran the key in Showkey





I went to the Activation screen and clicked on "change key"
entered the Win7 key and it returns the screen I showed above

 

Hmmm that key is likely blocked from online activation then.

It may work with phone activation from Win 7 Pro.

 

Finally got it activated but still confused as to what is really going on with activation.

here is what I did:

-got another Win7 Pro key from a friend (non volume license one)
-I tried to activate it, but it gave the same error message as before, "could not activate with this key"
-following suggestion above, I tried it a second time. This time it activated !!! (internet was connected both times)

don't know why just doing it 2 times makes it work. maybe someone else can explain that.

I checked it with ShowkeyPlus and to my surprise it now said it was activated and showed the installed key as the generic Win10Pro key that is listed in above post. But I did not enter that key. ????

 

Once you get a digital license for Windows 10, it switches to the generic product key. The original product key is only used to obtain the digital license.

 

Nice! *chuckle

The initial failure may have something to do with the VL to Retail licence switch before it finally 'takes' for activation.
Like I mentioned above, my Retail test install activated 1st time.

(I just guessed connectivity was the cause - I'll need to dig into Event log to find the real cause)

 

I don't know about using those with Windows 10. But, any time I've used a OEM-COA key from the sticker, for the first time, I had to phone activate. I'm talking about using a Windows 7 OEM-COA keys with Windows 7, Vista with Vista, XP keys with XP etc. It's like they aren't actually in the system until you phone activate them.