Windows 11 no longer activated after bios upgrade

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Stefan.coussen15ac02dc

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Alan J T
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A Fix has been provided
Please watch this Video

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I updated my bios 3 days ago hoping it would fix some usb issues I was having. Now my windows install is no longer activated (OEM key). Any one else got this problem?
How do you fix it?
Trouble shoot windows activations does not help.
entering the same key also does not work.

So any idea how to fix this and is this a f**-up from MSI bios update?
 
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Solution
Alan J T
schuett.un157c02e2 said:
Yesterday, I had the same problem. MEG Z690 UNIFY updated from 1.90 to 1.B0, and the activation was gone and couldn't be reactivated. I told people about that problem on the official MS Forum, and people couldn't believe the loss of activation. Luckily, after reentering the Windows key, Windows was activated.
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Please see Video
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I bought my key direct rom Microsoft at full price, and have also had this issue in the past on my pro z-690-A. Microsoft support did get my machine activated again, but from what I could tell, they did it by transferring the key from an OLD PC I used to have, not using my bought and paid for key at all. So contacting support may not work if you have no previous systems unused key to fall back on.

I would never buy direct from Microsoft again, since had I not already had an unused old system, there was basically NOTHING they could do to get my windows activated again, despite having proof that I'd paid and having the product listed in my account purchase history.

So best advice probably IS to buy a cheap key.....if it later goes off, then just buy another cheap one, still cheaper than going the official route?

Some other things to note:-

- on windows 10/11, windows will still operate normally even if it's NOT activated. You lose the ability to do things like customize the desktop background, and you'll have the activate windows thing in the corner, but other than that, the system will work completely normally.....you won't be locked out of using windows if it's not activated.

- when Microsoft support were trouble shooting with me, they noticed that since the bios upgrade, my motherboard serial number was now just listed as "Default" or "Default string", so it would appear that whatever fault is occurring to some systems during the update, it's clearing the serial number of the motherboard, possibly at bios level? This obviously leads windows to believe that the hardware has changed and therefore will not activate windows. Not sure if this will help troubleshoot the issue if MSI are looking into it?

- As others have mentioned, this isn't exclusively an MSI issue though, it also affects other mobo manufacturers....so you can see why they might just say "sorry, not our issue".....and equally, Microsoft can say "well, we can't just grant access to activation for an unlimited number of systems simultaneously with the same key, so if something has changed, you need a new license or contact the hardware ,manufacturer, it's their issue". If the mobo manufacturers are able to identify what is causing the issue during the bios updates, this would obviously be win win for everyone.....but I also believe that Microsoft SHOULD, if you can prove the purchase of the license, be able to manually remove the "OLD" system form the key and activate the new one.....I guess the difficulty there comes in a case like mine where the mobo is now saying it's got no individual serial number, so you can see why they'd be hesitant to active a system that can't be individually identified?
 
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>SIMPLE FIX<
In windows activation click "I have changed hardware" and windows will activated. I had the same issue after updating my BIOS.
 
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keith3_16 said:
>SIMPLE FIX<
In windows activation click "I have changed hardware" and windows will activated. I had the same issue after updating my BIOS.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, this doesn't always work. In my experience, it usually just says that there was a problem reactivating windows, and to contact customer service. This, as others have mentioned, may have to do with the TYPE of license, and how many times re-activation is permitted.

It's worth trying though.
 
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glenntidbur156f02e4 said:
Unfortunately, this doesn't always work. In my experience, it usually just says that there was a problem reactivating windows, and to contact customer service. This, as others have mentioned, may have to do with the TYPE of license, and how many times re-activation is permitted.
.

It's worth trying though.
Click to expand...



Then contact support, they will activate it for you. I've had the same Key since Vista. I've upgraded from XP-Vista-Win10 and now 11. Not to mention the upgrades and reinstalls I've done over the years. MS are good at just letting you do what you want. As long as it's not a dodgy key, you are golden
 
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keith3_16 said:
Then contact support, they will activate it for you. I've had the same Key since Vista. I've upgraded from XP-Vista-Win10 and now 11. Not to mention the upgrades and reinstalls I've done over the years. MS are good at just letting you do what you want. As long as it's not a dodgy key, you are golden
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Glad it worked out so easy for you.

My own experience was having to go on live chat for over 8 hours with Microsoft, despite the fact that they could see I'd bought the license directly from them through windows on the machine I was using. Same exact pc, only difference was the bios update.

By no means an easy or quick solution, and in the end they couldn't use the key I'd bought at all, so it's lucky I had an old unused system linked to my Microsoft account, because they ended up transferring that license instead.

Maybe I just got unlucky, maybe you've just been lucky.... but all I can tell you for certain is that it certainly wasn't a cake walk, and their solution isn't really a solution, since I basically spent over a hundred quid buying windows direct from them for absolutely no reason since they could not/ would not use that license.
 
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I'm currently running into same situation, just upgraded to MSI Z790 Edge Wifi, had no problem doing original troubleshooter to activate on change of hardware. Now after performing BIOS update, I had to reset security pin and now windows isn't activated. As seeing other forums this isn't just an MSI issue but with linking to mobo, the update changes what its looking at.

My question for those affected by this, in your Microsoft account, are you seeing multiple devices for same system?
I'm seeing 3 devices linked to my account:
1st Device showing older system; still shows linked to Windows 11 Professional.
2nd Device showing current mobo, not seen since yesterday, shows linked to Windows 11 Professional
3rd Device showing current mobo, seen today, but linked to Windows Professional

I'm looking at 2nd device was fresh install, and 3rd device was after mobo update, though 3rd isn't registered to windows 11 pro, just windows professional even though bottom information matches up (version, OS build, System etc match).

When trying to re-activate, it comes saying its already been re-activated for system. Currently waiting on microsoft support, but going to see if possibly removing some of the other devices might help fix it
 
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nicx814f902d1 said:
I'm currently running into same situation, just upgraded to MSI Z790 Edge Wifi, had no problem doing original troubleshooter to activate on change of hardware. Now after performing BIOS update, I had to reset security pin and now windows isn't activated. As seeing other forums this isn't just an MSI issue but with linking to mobo, the update changes what its looking at.

My question for those affected by this, in your Microsoft account, are you seeing multiple devices for same system?
I'm seeing 3 devices linked to my account:
1st Device showing older system; still shows linked to Windows 11 Professional.
2nd Device showing current mobo, not seen since yesterday, shows linked to Windows 11 Professional
3rd Device showing current mobo, seen today, but linked to Windows Professional

I'm looking at 2nd device was fresh install, and 3rd device was after mobo update, though 3rd isn't registered to windows 11 pro, just windows professional even though bottom information matches up (version, OS build, System etc match).

When trying to re-activate, it comes saying its already been re-activated for system. Currently waiting on microsoft support, but going to see if possibly removing some of the other devices might help fix it
Click to expand...
Same here with my Pro Z690-A WIFI. Just updated to A.90 BIOS last night. On reboot my MS pin had to be reset, but I didn't notice Windows 11 wasn't activated until I booted up this morning and got the notice in the bottom right corner. At first it told me it couldn't be activated, but after choosing "I changed hardware" it showed me 3 or 4 selections of the same device (this is a retail Windows 11 key that was bought for this build, so it's only ever been installed on this mobo) and let me re-activate. Never saw this before after a BIOS update, which I've done several times.

As others have pointed out, it seems like SOMETHING is happening during the BIOS flash that is resetting a serial number or other hardware ID. I wonder if MSI and other board makers use a shared flash codebase or library, so maybe it's a bug shared across all of them, but on its surface it doesn't appear to be a MS problem. Windows is responding as designed to what it detects as a change in hardware because the hardware identifies itself differently post-flash.

This can potentially be a costly bug, especially to those with an OEM Windows license key, so I would hope that MSI (and other board makers) would look into this rather than just point a finger at MS.
 
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and0r said:
I find this to be highly unlikely
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"Find" whatever you want.

I bought direct from Microsoft website (actually via the link in the windows settings), and had this bug happen.

Eventually got it sorted by phoning Microsoft support.... but even they couldn't do anything with the license I bought, they ended up having to transfer a license from an older pc that was also linked to my Microsoft account.

So, sorry, just telling people that they must have used a stolen key is not the answer here.

I know for 100% certainty, that this happens with a brand new licence bought direct from Microsoft, on a brand new build.

I found it particularly annoying, because had I known this could happen, and that even Microsoft themselves could not restore the license I paid for, I probably WOULDN'T have spent over a hundred quid buying it.

It's also made me slightly hesitant to update the bios again, because there's no additional old systems on my account..... so if it happens again, I'll have to just live with that annoying reminder in the bottom of the screen.

You can choose to believe whatever you want, but I know what I bought and paid for, and have first hand experience in how long it took to get sorted, and also that the "solution" still rendered the £100+ license I bought completely useless.
 
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You realize this story itself is even less plausible than purchasing a bad windows key directly from Microsoft?

There is no way you can purchase a key directly from Microsoft and then end up using some other key which you didn't purchase. That's not even how Microsoft works. If there was some kind of error with the key then it would be a huge deal, because it's a major product they are selling.
 
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and0r said:
You realize this story itself is even less plausible than purchasing a bad windows key directly from Microsoft?

There is no way you can purchase a key directly from Microsoft and then end up using some other key which you didn't purchase. That's not even how Microsoft works. If there was some kind of error with the key then it would be a huge deal, because it's a major product they are selling.
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It happened.

So you're obviously trolling at this point. Your denial is not helping the conversation either, so please don't expect another reply from me.

I've shared my experience, as have many others.

Just like all internet trolls though, your response is just "nah uh".

Good day.
 
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Trolling?
I am merely saying that your scenario is highly unlikely.
You are telling me you purchased a retail key directly from Microsoft which you could not activate, so then some other totally unrelated key was brought over from a different system instead.
This really is highly unlikely.

So it either didn't happen or you were trying to use the key with an incorrect version of windows... which is user error.
But typically this would also be resolved by contacting support
 
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and0r said:
Trolling?
I am merely saying that your scenario is highly unlikely.
You are telling me you purchased a retail key directly from Microsoft which you could not activate, so then some other totally unrelated key was brought over from a different system instead.
This really is highly unlikely.

So it either didn't happen or you were trying to use the key with an incorrect version of windows... which is user error.
But typically this would also be resolved by contacting support
Click to expand...

not sure if you're trolling, but you def seem to be suffering from the "if I've never experienced it, it must not be real" attitude that seems like is becoming more and more pervasive in society these days.
I've experienced this multiple times now after bios updates on at least two MSI intel boards, including yesterday. I can also easily reproduce it on my z590, that has dual bios, if I just switch to the other bios. switching back and trying to reactivate does not resolve it.
so I agree with some others, there's something in the bios that's being used for the activation hash, that's changing after bios updates. activation failure seems to happen an hour or so later, as mine was fine when I initially booted into windows after last update. then today it showed broken.
also seems to break xbox login and windows mail app logins
all my licenses are also legit, though mine are pretty old, dating back to win 7 or 8, and upgraded over time.
the first time I ran into this, the "I changed my hardware" didn't work and I had to call MS. while selecting the default computer during reactivation didn't work, MS's solution was for me to just pick one of my other computers to reactivate, and that worked, without apparently breaking activation on the other computer I'd selected.
since then, I've done that myself when it happened again, and today, I was able to just reselect the default computer it gave me, and it reactivated without issue.

like I think a couple others mentioned, I now seem to have multiples of the same machine in my MS account device list, though don't want to delete any of them, as I'm not sure if that would actually delete any of the licenses stored in my account.
when I first noticed this, the first time I ran into it and called MS, I asked about that, and the person on the phone actually didn't know if deleteing any of the duplicates would make me lose any of my licenses, so seems like even they don't know how this all works.
 
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Hello, This happened to me when I updated the bios of my motherboard last time. The solution was to enter the device management of my Microsoft account and delete them
 
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I had this issue as well with the z690 Force. The “i recently changed hardware” option in the Windows activation menu did not work. I had a legitimate copy of Windows 10 Pro
 
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