Activation issue with new SSD installation on Windows 11

naianirb said:

Man, am I pissed.. The guy had the audacity of saying the key I found on regedit was pirated. This is ridiculous. He gave me a lenghty explanation on digital rights and how the activation works and all.

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That's an extremely snotty and XP-era-like attitude that you received.

Luckily it hasn't escalated to that level for me, at least so far. In June, 2022, I ran the activation troubleshooter and it promptly fixed it.
My license is total-legit from Staples, at least about $200 for Pro, which was an upgrade from the Home license that I bought in 2019, IIRC from Staples for Windows 10. So, I never had an 8x product key, much less a 7 product key used for Windows 10 and 11.

hsehestedt said:

No, that's not how it works. Once you have activated, even with a Win 7 key, they are not revoking those activations. Once you have a digital license, you can reinstall without difficulties, or at least you should be able to do so.

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new changes by microsoft you actually cant activate any key less than windows 10 right now.

if its already activated your fine, if you do anything that requires reactivation you need to buy a new full version.

happened to me and others, updated bios, required reactivation, reactivation fails, called microsoft support they said any license before 10 cant be activated anymore.

Current offerings for the Media Creation Tool does not list Win7 or Win8/8.1

Collected1 said:

Yes I went with the image solution too. I've got it saved on a spare drive and will need to just call upon it whenever I want to reinstall. If it ever stops working or it gets too annoying I'll just buy a license from the MS store. Frustratingly I never did get a call back from them. Thanks everyone who tried to assist.

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Hi, I have been having the windows reinstall problem and couldn't find any "same" reinstall problem anywhere but now. And I have been trying everything to get Windows 11 Pro to work on my new m.2 SSD but no. So the only solution was to copy the OS from old (working) drive and move it to the new one? Thank you so much!