Retail Win 11 upgrade on top of a Win 10 that is not activated

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Retail Win 11 upgrade on top of a Win 10 that is not activated

Bill Newcomer 0

Windows 11 upgrade preparation question. I am currently running Win 10. Win 11 compatibility says my PC is not good enough. I purchased and installed a new MB, RAM and SSD. I cloned Win 10 to the new SSD. It is working fine but has a message to Activate Windows (10). I have my 20 digit product key but because of my hardware changes I get an error of 0X803FA067. I am about ready to upgrade to Win 11 with my Retail version of Windows 11 on a physical DVD/CDROM. I am concerned about how well the upgrade will go if my Win 10 is not active.

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Answer 1

IGYQ 16,280 Independent Advisor

Hi!

Microsoft’s upgrade process from Windows 10 to 11 carries over your activation. If your Windows 10 isn’t activated, Windows 11 won’t automatically activate, even if the installation “completes”, it will still show Activate Windows afterward.

Do this again and activate Wind10 first.

Go to Settings → System → Activation → Change product key
Enter your Windows 10 retail key.
- If 0x803FA067 appears again, do this instead:
- Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run: slmgr /ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX slmgr /ato

Can I confirm if your Win11 comes with it's retail key?

Bill Newcomer 0 Reputation points

2025-10-12T21:33:45.89+00:00

I was able to previously locate WHERE to enter the product key. The problem was MS kept rejecting it due my hardware upgrade for Win 11 compatibility.
Bill Newcomer 0 Reputation points

2025-10-12T21:53:06.0166667+00:00

Thank you for the reply. Installing Win 11 was a day and a half battle (as usual). I had to convert my SSD partition from MBR to GTP. THEN, I could get Secure Boot to work in BIOS. Otherwise, my BIOS would fail to acknowledge I actually had a hard drive installed. After that, during the 1st install attempt, the progress hung at 46% (on the white background) for a very long time. The 2nd attempt I used task manager to monitor my hardware during the process. I learned this long pause at 46% is where all the downloading occurs based on how busy my network connection was. I just takes patience. On this attempt, my PC locked up at 92% progress (on the blue background). I researched a few things on youtube made some changes and tried again. Once again, it locked up at 91% on the blue background. It was 1:15AM. I walked away and went to bed. When I got up this morning, It was still locked up at 91%. A little more youtube research and I changed windows Update from Manual to Automatic. I also turned off Real Time Protection and Cloud Protection. Win 11 finally fully installed. My wife's desktop remained the same. My Desktop (administrator) was a scrambled mess. Now I have to go through and uninstall all the bloatware that has been installed on my PC. P.S. After spending over $100 to purchase a retail license with a CD, I get a pop up message on my last viewing in Win 10 that I can get Win 11 for FREE. (Thanks Microsoft)

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Retail Win 11 upgrade on top of a Win 10 that is not activated

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