Windows 10 randomly deactivated itself

Question

Windows 10 randomly deactivated itself

Anonymous

During July of 2018 I've bought an Acer laptop that had Windows 10 Home pre-installed on it. The laptop and OS worked perfectly fine, but on October 7th or 8th of 2018 Windows 10 for some reason, deactivated itself. I tried the troubleshooting the activation thingy and it just says "We weren't able to activate Windows on this device" and the only two options there are is to buy a genuine copy of Windows or activate it by pressing "I changed hardware on this device recently." I pressed "I changed hardware on this device recently", but it doesn't show my laptop and I also factory reset my laptop, hoping that it would reactivate, but nope, it is still deactivated. Please help me, I am getting frustrated and angry that nothing is working and I really don't want to pay $119 on something that I already own

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4 answers

Answer 1

Hello RonaldTremblay1,

It deactivate before you changed the hardware?

If Windows 10 came preinstalled on your computer

you can see your product key doing this:

Press Windows key + X

Click Command Prompt (as an admin)

Type this command:

wmic path SoftwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKey

Click Enter

You will get the product key

How to enter it:

Click Start, go to Settings go to Update & security click Activation click Change the product key then enter the new product key then click Next to Activate

When Windows is pre-installed then it is the manufacturer's responsibility to provide a valid product key.

If you are unable to activate Windows 10 you will have to contact Microsoft support

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus/ (talk to a person)

Phone numbers by region

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/405170...

Hope it helps, have a good day

Answer 2

Hi Ronald. I'm Greg, an installation specialist and 9 year Windows MVP, here to help you.

Did you actually change hardware on the PC, or just try that in the troubleshooter?

If the PC came from factory with Windows 10 it should have the Product Key embedded in the UEFI chip on motherboard. You can install and run ProducKey: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/produkey-x64.zip to read the OEM-BIOS key, insert that in Activation Settings.

If there is no OEM-BIOS key then it has no factory Activation as almost all Acer laptops do. Where did you buy it? Is it still within a year of purchase so you can contact Acer Support under the included Support, Repair and Replacement warranty?

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and let us know how it goes. I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

________________________________________________________

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Answer 3

Igor Leyko 110.6K Independent Advisor

Hi,

please show the result of slmgr /dlv command.

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Answer 4

Anonymous

Hello,

Try Microsoft chat support (available on weekdays only) to get live help from Microsoft agent to resolve the activation issue:

https://partner.support.services.microsoft.com/...

Let us know if this helps!

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Windows 10 randomly deactivated itself

4 answers