Windows Activation after fixing a corrupt BIOS and SSD

[hakimdjz]

Hi all,

Can anyone provide guidance/advice on how to officially reclaim my activation key?

Recently my BIOS chip became corrupt to a point that all the recovery steps, such as the win key combos, wouldn't work.  I was left with a black screen and  nice flashing LED on my caps-lock :-).  Thanks to my engineering skills and the tools I have, I was able to unsolder the BIOS chip and flash it with the correct BIOS bin files that were generated by the HP recovery tool (specially 01966.bin) and soldered it back on.  Now everytime I boot, I recieve a message saying manufacure mode unlocked, or something of that meaning.  I also had to re-install Windows 10 because the SSD became corrupt too.   Everything now works fine, apart from those messages and activation key.

I don't want to fork out £120 for a new one. 

When I bougth the laptop, it came with Windows 8 installed.  Then at some point MS released Windows 10 and I upgraded.  I've read some posts that mention the initial versions of Windows OS that was installed from new should be installed first for MS activator to detect it.

Any help/advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Hakim

[WAWood]

@hakimdjz 

Sorry, but I don't have very good news for you ...

When you upgrade from an older PC to Win10, MS "reuses" the original activation code and grants you a Win10 license through something they term "digital entitlement" -- which basically means you can continue to use Win10, for free, on that device.

But ... there's a catch.

The license only applies for the "life of the device" -- and MS is (typically) vague on what that actually means.

What looks like happened is that when you changed the BIOS by burning a replacement, MS Windows is now interpreting that as a "new" device, and as a result, will no longer accept the product key it harvested from your PC.

This is ENTIRELY an MS situation, as HP is not going to furnish you a second product key.

Sorry, but you will have to take this up with Microsoft to see if they will issue you a workaround to the activation issue.