Windows 10: Windows Deactivated itself out of no where, and now I am unable to activate it

I bought an Asus Laptop back in 2020 which came pre-installed with windows 10 Home Single Language it has given me a lot of trouble in the past but day before yesterday the laptop crashed as a result of overheating and it started to restart but wouldn't turn on so I eventually opened up the trouble shooting options and went to advanced trouble shooting and picked the option to repair the issue that was preventing me from booting up, it looked through my disk and said it repaired it and yes it did I could open my laptop but now my windows was deactivated, go to try and activate it again this is

:)

 

Unable to Activate Win 8

I was about to suggest run CMD as Admin and then do a "slmgr -ipk xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx" activation...does anyone know if that works with win8?

 

Unable to Activate Win 8

I got Win 8 isntalled on my file server, but I am unable to activate it with the key. Says the key is invalid. Since I work at microsoft I got a retail version from the employee store. I have been doing some reading, and to be able to activate Win8 with the key there needs to be a previous version of Windows installed for it to work. WTF, so you can't do clean installs?

And the box says nothing about Upgrade version. Straight Windows 8 Pro.

 

Activation and Updates

Thank you. I will uninstall Comodo Anti-Virus and Firewall then. Which of them does a better job of defending, would you say? Comodo or Windows Defender?