Windows 10 Pro suddenly reports not being activated

Soldato
Joined
11 Oct 2009
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16,548
Location
Greater London
Woke up this morning to find out my PC is suddenly not activated. I tried going through the troubleshooter and but it runs into an error and can't reactivate itself. I tried re-entering my product key but it says it can't be used on this copy of Windows. The even stranger thing, it says my digital licence is a 10 home licence. However, this key has been a working 10 pro licence since 10 was released, and was previously a retail Windows 7 Professional copy which was even bought from OcUK back in 2010.

I tried going through the phone options but so far it's been useless. I'll probably try again later but I'm struggling to get an actual person to talk to. Has anyone else seen this happen?

EDIT: Looked on Reddit, seems I'm not the only one with this issue and it could be a problem with the 1809 build, it's the only thing I can see that we all have in common: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/9v4hs7/windows_10_cant_be_activated/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/9v6ibm/windows_10_pro_suddenly_not_activated/

EDIT 2: A little more reading some 1803 users are also affected. Definitely seems like Microsoft messed up something on their end so will give it a couple of days to see if that fixes it. Managed to get the right options to finally talk to a person on Microsoft support, but was held for over half an hour so had to hang up to get to work.

EDIT 3: Someone managed to get through, and seems Microsoft has acknowledged they have an issue with the activation server so they're working on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/9v6ibm/windows_10_pro_suddenly_not_activated/e9a5rkk/

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ctivated/fe9a4ecf-2e2a-491d-a43e-b010c316d1c4


Final EDIT:

They seemed to have fixed it. Run the troubleshooter and Windows should be activated again.
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
17 Nov 2003
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1,910
Location
Gateshead
I was on a chat with microsoft for about half and hour early this morning. They fixed it for me but didn't say what's causing it.
 
Associate
Joined
6 Jun 2016
Posts
1,558
I just reinstalled a machine at work using our Windows 10 Pro volume license and it activated ok and then shortly afterwards came up with the error saying it's a Windows Home license...:rolleyes:
 
Associate
Joined
8 Nov 2018
Posts
2
Same, 1803. Wasted the last few hours trying to fix. Almost bought a new copy lol. My pro copy is oem from overclockers and I registered here specifically about this. Working fine for 3.5 years.

Hopefully it resolves itself.
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Jul 2008
Posts
7,367
I assumed once activated that was it... Seems to me to be the prelude to renta windows.. I don't see another reason to keep checking the activation state..
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
90,821
No issues on any of my installs but looks like they've deactivated the activation servers or something. For a wonder the first time I've started up in forever and not had the OS start chugging away preparing for or doing updates but maybe related to them doing stuff on the backend to sort this dunno.
 
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