Windows 10: Windows keep saying I need to activate but won't let me activate after cloning to new drive.

Title, basically. Theres irritating text on screen at all times, overlayed over all windows telling me i need to activate windows, but whenever i try to it says I dont have a valid product key. I've been using this same windows since windows 7, updated to windows 10 when the free version was released, and have copied/cloned it over through multiple drives whenever i needed to upgrade them.



The most recent one was yesterday when i cloned it off my old SSD to a new M.2 SSD drive. But now I get this error and it won't go away. What can i do here? I still have my product key, but like i said windows is telling me its not valid.

submitted by /u/gubaguy
[link] [comments]

:)

 

Activation options for Win10 with instant clones

We have a secure (no internet access) lab environment setup to test and validate a VMWare VDI deployment of Win10 clients.

Our issue is activation of the Win10 clients as they require re-activation every time we logoff and back on because we are using instant clones.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to resolve this? Here are the options we are considering and issues as we understand them:

• Setup a KMS server
  • Requires a Volume license, which is doable
  • Documentation says we must have a minimum of 25 hosts, we don' have that in our lab
• Use our MSDN account
  • No support for Win10 KMS license
  • No support for MKS activation
• Manually activate each time
  • Gonna spend a lot of time on the phone
  • Win10 has no grace period so machines are crippled w/o activation

Anyone have a thought or suggestions? I'm hoping I missed something.

Thanks

 

Windows 10 Activation and cloning HDD


Hi I have the the same problem a the original poster.

I've followed the excellent guide here to the letter but Windows no longer activates on the other machines. All 23 of which are identical.

I finally it the bullet and phoned Microsoft to be told the machines required a retail licence to activate. The original laptop was activated via its own OEM DVD and upgraded to Windows 10 64bit via the MS icon. I cloned the original drive and put them in the new laptops and the activation fails.

None of the steps in this guide seem to work t give the activation.

I've not entered a product key as they are all generic now for windows 10.

Is it because MS are using the hardware hash as teh "key" now. Whilst they are identical laptops the hardware will have different serial numbers!

 

activating a cloned SSD

I cloned my windows 10 drive to a new SSD and now it asks for activation.

I purchased the computer with windows 10 already on it and dont have the number what now/