Lost Activation...possible MS update blocker revenge?? ;-)

Dell Optiplex 360 legacy BIOS

Win 10 pro 1609.16299.192 activated with digital entitlement.


I thought I'd try to help the wifi speed thread.
I disabled my lan interface and plugged in a
TP-Link TL-WDN3200 USB2 WiFi interface.
Did some file transfer speed tests at 2.4 GHz.
using the default win10 driver with success.
I tried to connect at 5 GHz. and the system locked up.

I pulled the wifi and tried to shutdown.
It hung at the blue screen "shutting down" for
a long time and I had to cut the power.
Rebooted.
After a lot of churning it came up.
Now, the status page says, "Windows is not activated."
Re-enabled the LAN so windows can call home and rebooted.
The status page still says, "Windows is not activated."

Pulled the plug-in win10 drive and attempted to boot the
internal win7 drive. It won't boot at all.
Tried letting macrium fix boot issues. No success.
I booted macrium rescue again. Looked at the root
directory of C:. The directories looked good, but
there was 15GB less drive space used.
Restored a backup and win7 now seems to be working OK.

I physically disconnected the win7 drive.

Plugged in a DIFFERENT win10 drive.
"Windows is not activated"

Restored a recent win10 backup.
Now, it says "Connect to the web to activate windows."
But I am connected to the web. I've seen this message
before, but it always activated within a few minutes.
Not this time.

I turned off all the update tweaks I can remember. NO help.

Tried to activate online. "Windows cannot connect to
activation server." That was the clue that it might be
a windows update issue. Maybe MS found a way to discourage
use of update blockers ;-)

Tried windows update mini tool. Some updates worked, but the 03/13/18
cumulative update will not download.
Hours later, the 4/10/18 cumulative update showed up in place of the
03/13/18
update and installed. Maybe I just caught it in transition.

Ran windows activation troubleshooter.
Result was, (paraphrasing)
"we found a win 10 pro digital license for this device,
you need to install windows 10 pro..."

System status says: Win 10 pro 64-bit.
winver says 1609.16299.192.


Wiped the drive and did fresh install of win10-64 pro v1609.
Windows is activated.

In summary...WTF?

This is a test system, so it's not the end of the world.
The big deal is that I can't rely on win10 as a daily driver.
System hozed, restoring backup doesn't fix it.
Not only did it hoze win10, but also trashed the other
win7 drive on the system.

Win7 and win10 were each installed
with the other disconnected, so there should be no boot
interactions other than BIOS boot order settings and F12
one-time boot menu.

I have several plug-in win10 clone drives for this machine
that I've been using to test various compatibility issues.
I'm afraid to plug one of them in for fear of borking the system
again. Research for this uncovered that there's limit on the
number of times windows can be activated. No clue what
increments that counter. I'm slamming different boot drives
with different operating systems multiple times a day into
this test system. No complete destruction or activation issues
until today.

I did uncover another interesting windows update quirk.
When you run Windows Update MiniTool.cmd
it runs wub.exe to enable updates and starts
wumt_x64.exe
with the selection for windows updates automatic enabled.
I've been setting that back to notify every time.
When wumt closes, it runs wub.exe to block updates.

If you run wumt_64.exe directly, it comes up with windows updates
not set to automatic. Not clear whether it remembers the
last setting or decides some other way.

Point is that maybe I don't need wub.exe at all.
Maybe I don't need any of the other update constraining techniques.

Just let windows notify about needing updates, but use wumt
to do them.

I'm gonna try using ONLY wumt_64.exe and not mess with any
of the other update settings.

Anyhoo, back to the clusterbork in hand...

What I'd like is to get back activated versions of the test
drive(s) I spent so much effort configuring. I'm afraid to go too
far down the rabbit hole for fear of losing the ability to get
an activated fresh install.
All the test drives (one at a time) have been working fine in this
machine and never plugged into any other machine.

The trashed win10 drive can't have any effect on a different win10
cloned drive what wasn't plugged in...or a backup
that was archived elsewhere. It had to have something to
do with something getting changed on the MS end of the
activation system.

In summary...WTF?

Ideas?

mike wrote:

Dell Optiplex 360 legacy BIOS

Win 10 pro 1609.16299.192 activated with digital entitlement.


I thought I'd try to help the wifi speed thread.
I disabled my lan interface and plugged in a
TP-Link TL-WDN3200 USB2 WiFi interface.
Did some file transfer speed tests at 2.4 GHz.
using the default win10 driver with success.
I tried to connect at 5 GHz. and the system locked up.

I pulled the wifi and tried to shutdown.
It hung at the blue screen "shutting down" for
a long time and I had to cut the power.
Rebooted.
After a lot of churning it came up.
Now, the status page says, "Windows is not activated."
Re-enabled the LAN so windows can call home and rebooted.
The status page still says, "Windows is not activated."

Pulled the plug-in win10 drive and attempted to boot the
internal win7 drive. It won't boot at all.
Tried letting macrium fix boot issues. No success.
I booted macrium rescue again. Looked at the root
directory of C:. The directories looked good, but
there was 15GB less drive space used.
Restored a backup and win7 now seems to be working OK.

I physically disconnected the win7 drive.

Plugged in a DIFFERENT win10 drive.
"Windows is not activated"

Restored a recent win10 backup.
Now, it says "Connect to the web to activate windows."
But I am connected to the web. I've seen this message
before, but it always activated within a few minutes.
Not this time.

I turned off all the update tweaks I can remember. NO help.

Tried to activate online. "Windows cannot connect to
activation server." That was the clue that it might be
a windows update issue. Maybe MS found a way to discourage
use of update blockers ;-)

Tried windows update mini tool. Some updates worked, but the 03/13/18
cumulative update will not download.
Hours later, the 4/10/18 cumulative update showed up in place of the
03/13/18
update and installed. Maybe I just caught it in transition.

Ran windows activation troubleshooter.
Result was, (paraphrasing)
"we found a win 10 pro digital license for this device,
you need to install windows 10 pro..."

System status says: Win 10 pro 64-bit.
winver says 1609.16299.192.


Wiped the drive and did fresh install of win10-64 pro v1609.
Windows is activated.

In summary...WTF?

This is a test system, so it's not the end of the world.
The big deal is that I can't rely on win10 as a daily driver.
System hozed, restoring backup doesn't fix it.
Not only did it hoze win10, but also trashed the other
win7 drive on the system.

Win7 and win10 were each installed
with the other disconnected, so there should be no boot
interactions other than BIOS boot order settings and F12
one-time boot menu.

I have several plug-in win10 clone drives for this machine
that I've been using to test various compatibility issues.
I'm afraid to plug one of them in for fear of borking the system
again. Research for this uncovered that there's limit on the
number of times windows can be activated. No clue what
increments that counter. I'm slamming different boot drives
with different operating systems multiple times a day into
this test system. No complete destruction or activation issues
until today.

I did uncover another interesting windows update quirk.
When you run Windows Update MiniTool.cmd
it runs wub.exe to enable updates and starts
wumt_x64.exe
with the selection for windows updates automatic enabled.
I've been setting that back to notify every time.
When wumt closes, it runs wub.exe to block updates.

If you run wumt_64.exe directly, it comes up with windows updates
not set to automatic. Not clear whether it remembers the
last setting or decides some other way.

Point is that maybe I don't need wub.exe at all.
Maybe I don't need any of the other update constraining techniques.

Just let windows notify about needing updates, but use wumt
to do them.

I'm gonna try using ONLY wumt_64.exe and not mess with any
of the other update settings.

Anyhoo, back to the clusterbork in hand...

What I'd like is to get back activated versions of the test
drive(s) I spent so much effort configuring. I'm afraid to go too
far down the rabbit hole for fear of losing the ability to get
an activated fresh install.
All the test drives (one at a time) have been working fine in this
machine and never plugged into any other machine.

The trashed win10 drive can't have any effect on a different win10
cloned drive what wasn't plugged in...or a backup
that was archived elsewhere. It had to have something to
do with something getting changed on the MS end of the
activation system.

In summary...WTF?

Ideas?

So a hardware hash was getting a wrong answer ?

Activation is based on hardware hash, and can also be vaguely
related to MSA (for moving a copy of Windows or something).

A major contributor might be the NIC MAC address. As a lot of
motherboards come with one NIC, and there's a requirement to buy
blocks of MAC addresses from the IEEE, to assign to each motherboard
during manufacture. And that functions as a kind of serial number
(in addition to any [volatile] motherboard serial number that might be
stored in the BIOS DMI).

But I don't know if that aligns with your symptoms
all that well.

Paul

"mike" wrote in message news


Dell Optiplex 360 legacy BIOS

Win 10 pro 1609.16299.192 activated with digital entitlement.


I thought I'd try to help the wifi speed thread.
I disabled my lan interface and plugged in a
TP-Link TL-WDN3200 USB2 WiFi interface.
Did some file transfer speed tests at 2.4 GHz.
using the default win10 driver with success.
I tried to connect at 5 GHz. and the system locked up.

I pulled the wifi and tried to shutdown.
It hung at the blue screen "shutting down" for
a long time and I had to cut the power.
Rebooted.
After a lot of churning it came up.
Now, the status page says, "Windows is not activated."
Re-enabled the LAN so windows can call home and rebooted.
The status page still says, "Windows is not activated."

Pulled the plug-in win10 drive and attempted to boot the
internal win7 drive. It won't boot at all.
Tried letting macrium fix boot issues. No success.
I booted macrium rescue again. Looked at the root
directory of C:. The directories looked good, but
there was 15GB less drive space used.
Restored a backup and win7 now seems to be working OK.

I physically disconnected the win7 drive.

Plugged in a DIFFERENT win10 drive.
"Windows is not activated"

Restored a recent win10 backup.
Now, it says "Connect to the web to activate windows."
But I am connected to the web. I've seen this message
before, but it always activated within a few minutes.
Not this time.

I turned off all the update tweaks I can remember. NO help.

Tried to activate online. "Windows cannot connect to
activation server." That was the clue that it might be
a windows update issue. Maybe MS found a way to discourage
use of update blockers ;-)

Tried windows update mini tool. Some updates worked, but the 03/13/18
cumulative update will not download.
Hours later, the 4/10/18 cumulative update showed up in place of the
03/13/18
update and installed. Maybe I just caught it in transition.

Ran windows activation troubleshooter.
Result was, (paraphrasing)
"we found a win 10 pro digital license for this device,
you need to install windows 10 pro..."

System status says: Win 10 pro 64-bit.
winver says 1609.16299.192.


Wiped the drive and did fresh install of win10-64 pro v1609.
Windows is activated.

In summary...WTF?

This is a test system, so it's not the end of the world.
The big deal is that I can't rely on win10 as a daily driver.
System hozed, restoring backup doesn't fix it.
Not only did it hoze win10, but also trashed the other
win7 drive on the system.

Win7 and win10 were each installed
with the other disconnected, so there should be no boot
interactions other than BIOS boot order settings and F12
one-time boot menu.

I have several plug-in win10 clone drives for this machine
that I've been using to test various compatibility issues.
I'm afraid to plug one of them in for fear of borking the system
again. Research for this uncovered that there's limit on the
number of times windows can be activated. No clue what
increments that counter. I'm slamming different boot drives
with different operating systems multiple times a day into
this test system. No complete destruction or activation issues
until today.

I did uncover another interesting windows update quirk.
When you run Windows Update MiniTool.cmd
it runs wub.exe to enable updates and starts
wumt_x64.exe
with the selection for windows updates automatic enabled.
I've been setting that back to notify every time.
When wumt closes, it runs wub.exe to block updates.

If you run wumt_64.exe directly, it comes up with windows updates
not set to automatic. Not clear whether it remembers the
last setting or decides some other way.

Point is that maybe I don't need wub.exe at all.
Maybe I don't need any of the other update constraining techniques.

Just let windows notify about needing updates, but use wumt
to do them.

I'm gonna try using ONLY wumt_64.exe and not mess with any
of the other update settings.

Anyhoo, back to the clusterbork in hand...

What I'd like is to get back activated versions of the test
drive(s) I spent so much effort configuring. I'm afraid to go too
far down the rabbit hole for fear of losing the ability to get
an activated fresh install.
All the test drives (one at a time) have been working fine in this
machine and never plugged into any other machine.

The trashed win10 drive can't have any effect on a different win10
cloned drive what wasn't plugged in...or a backup
that was archived elsewhere. It had to have something to
do with something getting changed on the MS end of the
activation system.

In summary...WTF?

Ideas?




Mike,

Don't have a fix but I've had a similar experience with my dozen or so win10
variants in VM's. Each of those was a TechNet license that were for the
various flavors of Win7. So I made a VM of each and the upgraded each to
it's Win10 equivalent when Win10 came out. As each new version came out I
upgraded several VM's to the latest version.

So now I have versions 1511, 1607, 1703 and 1709 with still some VM's yet to
be upgraded from 1511. So I tried one last week and after upgrading, I got
the same not activated situation and could not get it activated. I deleted
that VM.

Made another VM using a Win10 image on a USB drive (ver 1511) and it
activated. Same hardware same VM configuration.

Checked other VM's after doing online updates and they all showed as
activated before upgrading and one or two had to be activated manually while
others simply auto activated.

So it would appear that the anomaly is at the MS end as you also
experienced. Since these were VM's just to use for testing purposes, I
didn't really dig in but went searching and found this
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...s-why-activate

And this
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ardware-change
which may help you.

--


Bob S.

Am Fri, 13 Apr 2018 21:57:31 -0400, schrieb Bob_S:

So it would appear that the anomaly is at the MS end

Just to report back, so far, my activation is fine even though I
implemented the update-blocking methods that Paul and Bob_S discussed in
prior threads...

On 4/13/2018 6:57 PM, Bob_S wrote:


Mike,

Don't have a fix but I've had a similar experience with my dozen or so
win10 variants in VM's. Each of those was a TechNet license that were
for the various flavors of Win7. So I made a VM of each and the
upgraded each to it's Win10 equivalent when Win10 came out. As each new
version came out I upgraded several VM's to the latest version.

I started with win7, upgraded to win10 to get the digital entitlement,
then wiped the disk and reinstalled 10 from scratch. I hoped that
would remove any residual win7 licensing issues. Seems to have worked
until now.

So now I have versions 1511, 1607, 1703 and 1709 with still some VM's
yet to be upgraded from 1511. So I tried one last week and after
upgrading, I got the same not activated situation and could not get it
activated. I deleted that VM.

Made another VM using a Win10 image on a USB drive (ver 1511) and it
activated. Same hardware same VM configuration.

Checked other VM's after doing online updates and they all showed as
activated before upgrading and one or two had to be activated manually
while others simply auto activated.

OK, but I had a working updated system that just lost activation.
The relevant events were lan/wifi related.
And let's not forget that it also trashed the win7 on a different hard
drive. I don't believe in coincidence.

So it would appear that the anomaly is at the MS end as you also
experienced. Since these were VM's just to use for testing purposes, I
didn't really dig in but went searching and found this

My concern is whether booting a different win10 drive will re-introduce
the failure mode and cause the working drives to
lose activation...again.
Anything recoverable is not a problem. I'm concerned about triggering
some MS limitation or piracy sensor that locks me out permanently.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...s-why-activate

And this
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ardware-change
which may help you.

Thanks, I'd found both of those.
I haven't decided what to do about the second one.
I really don't want a microsoft account. Those things tend to try to
sync all your devices. That's the last thing I need.
The ability to change hardware and reactivate is enticing.
I'm thinking I'll create a new account. That shouldn't link anything.
Nothing is ever simple. I think I may have created an insider account
for this machine. I confirmed that MS already has knowledge of my
hardware. Having two accounts for the same hardware may come
back to bite me in the ass.

Since I disabled the LAN to run the wifi tests, I probably did
change the hash. I have had activation issues on XP when the lan chip
couldn't remember it's MAC address. I had to manually re-enter the
MAC address into the lan setup. But the damage had been done and I
had to activate. I've never had an issue with just disabling and
re-enabling the lan with device manager...until now.

Some days, I just want to curl up into a ball and hug my VIC-20.
Good times...

On 4/13/2018 6:54 PM, Paul wrote:
mike wrote:

Dell Optiplex 360 legacy BIOS

Win 10 pro 1609.16299.192 activated with digital entitlement.


I thought I'd try to help the wifi speed thread.
I disabled my lan interface and plugged in a
TP-Link TL-WDN3200 USB2 WiFi interface.
Did some file transfer speed tests at 2.4 GHz.
using the default win10 driver with success.
I tried to connect at 5 GHz. and the system locked up.

I pulled the wifi and tried to shutdown.
It hung at the blue screen "shutting down" for
a long time and I had to cut the power.
Rebooted.
After a lot of churning it came up.
Now, the status page says, "Windows is not activated."
Re-enabled the LAN so windows can call home and rebooted.
The status page still says, "Windows is not activated."

Pulled the plug-in win10 drive and attempted to boot the
internal win7 drive. It won't boot at all.
Tried letting macrium fix boot issues. No success.
I booted macrium rescue again. Looked at the root
directory of C:. The directories looked good, but
there was 15GB less drive space used.
Restored a backup and win7 now seems to be working OK.

I physically disconnected the win7 drive.

Plugged in a DIFFERENT win10 drive.
"Windows is not activated"

Restored a recent win10 backup.
Now, it says "Connect to the web to activate windows."
But I am connected to the web. I've seen this message
before, but it always activated within a few minutes.
Not this time.

I turned off all the update tweaks I can remember. NO help.

Tried to activate online. "Windows cannot connect to
activation server." That was the clue that it might be
a windows update issue. Maybe MS found a way to discourage
use of update blockers ;-)

Tried windows update mini tool. Some updates worked, but the 03/13/18
cumulative update will not download.
Hours later, the 4/10/18 cumulative update showed up in place of the
03/13/18
update and installed. Maybe I just caught it in transition.

Ran windows activation troubleshooter.
Result was, (paraphrasing)
"we found a win 10 pro digital license for this device,
you need to install windows 10 pro..."

System status says: Win 10 pro 64-bit.
winver says 1609.16299.192.


Wiped the drive and did fresh install of win10-64 pro v1609.
Windows is activated.

In summary...WTF?

This is a test system, so it's not the end of the world.
The big deal is that I can't rely on win10 as a daily driver.
System hozed, restoring backup doesn't fix it.
Not only did it hoze win10, but also trashed the other
win7 drive on the system.

Win7 and win10 were each installed
with the other disconnected, so there should be no boot
interactions other than BIOS boot order settings and F12
one-time boot menu.

I have several plug-in win10 clone drives for this machine
that I've been using to test various compatibility issues.
I'm afraid to plug one of them in for fear of borking the system
again. Research for this uncovered that there's limit on the
number of times windows can be activated. No clue what
increments that counter. I'm slamming different boot drives
with different operating systems multiple times a day into
this test system. No complete destruction or activation issues
until today.

I did uncover another interesting windows update quirk.
When you run Windows Update MiniTool.cmd
it runs wub.exe to enable updates and starts
wumt_x64.exe
with the selection for windows updates automatic enabled.
I've been setting that back to notify every time.
When wumt closes, it runs wub.exe to block updates.

If you run wumt_64.exe directly, it comes up with windows updates
not set to automatic. Not clear whether it remembers the
last setting or decides some other way.

Point is that maybe I don't need wub.exe at all.
Maybe I don't need any of the other update constraining techniques.

Just let windows notify about needing updates, but use wumt
to do them.

I'm gonna try using ONLY wumt_64.exe and not mess with any
of the other update settings.

Anyhoo, back to the clusterbork in hand...

What I'd like is to get back activated versions of the test
drive(s) I spent so much effort configuring. I'm afraid to go too
far down the rabbit hole for fear of losing the ability to get
an activated fresh install.
All the test drives (one at a time) have been working fine in this
machine and never plugged into any other machine.

The trashed win10 drive can't have any effect on a different win10
cloned drive what wasn't plugged in...or a backup
that was archived elsewhere. It had to have something to
do with something getting changed on the MS end of the
activation system.

In summary...WTF?

Ideas?

So a hardware hash was getting a wrong answer ?

I'm not sure that's the case. Activation
troubleshooter confirms the hash, but thinks
I've got the wrong version of windows and instructs
me to install the same version that I have.

Activation is based on hardware hash, and can also be vaguely
related to MSA (for moving a copy of Windows or something).

Experience suggests that the onboard LAN MAC address can be
used in the hash even if it's disabled in device manager. That's what
I did here.

Deactivation trigger seems to be latched. Once triggered,
it can't recover itself without the reactivation process.
It's possible that a driver failure in the wifi system
wrote the wrong register, borked
the hash and triggered the deactivation.

The question is, "where does that deactivation take place??
If it's on my hard drive, changing to a different instance
(clone) of the previously activated system should have fixed it.
If the deactivation is attached to my digital entitlement on some
MS server, how did a fresh reinstall fix that?

And how did any of that affect the other installed hard drive with
win7?

A major contributor might be the NIC MAC address. As a lot of
motherboards come with one NIC, and there's a requirement to buy
blocks of MAC addresses from the IEEE, to assign to each motherboard
during manufacture. And that functions as a kind of serial number
(in addition to any [volatile] motherboard serial number that might be
stored in the BIOS DMI).

But I don't know if that aligns with your symptoms
all that well.

Paul

"mike" wrote in message news

On 4/13/2018 6:57 PM, Bob_S wrote:


Mike,

Don't have a fix but I've had a similar experience with my dozen or so
win10 variants in VM's. Each of those was a TechNet license that were
for the various flavors of Win7. So I made a VM of each and the
upgraded each to it's Win10 equivalent when Win10 came out. As each new
version came out I upgraded several VM's to the latest version.

I started with win7, upgraded to win10 to get the digital entitlement,
then wiped the disk and reinstalled 10 from scratch. I hoped that
would remove any residual win7 licensing issues. Seems to have worked
until now.

So now I have versions 1511, 1607, 1703 and 1709 with still some VM's
yet to be upgraded from 1511. So I tried one last week and after
upgrading, I got the same not activated situation and could not get it
activated. I deleted that VM.

Made another VM using a Win10 image on a USB drive (ver 1511) and it
activated. Same hardware same VM configuration.

Checked other VM's after doing online updates and they all showed as
activated before upgrading and one or two had to be activated manually
while others simply auto activated.

OK, but I had a working updated system that just lost activation.
The relevant events were lan/wifi related.
And let's not forget that it also trashed the win7 on a different hard
drive. I don't believe in coincidence.

So it would appear that the anomaly is at the MS end as you also
experienced. Since these were VM's just to use for testing purposes, I
didn't really dig in but went searching and found this

My concern is whether booting a different win10 drive will re-introduce
the failure mode and cause the working drives to
lose activation...again.
Anything recoverable is not a problem. I'm concerned about triggering
some MS limitation or piracy sensor that locks me out permanently.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...s-why-activate

And this
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ardware-change
which may help you.

Thanks, I'd found both of those.
I haven't decided what to do about the second one.
I really don't want a microsoft account. Those things tend to try to
sync all your devices. That's the last thing I need.
The ability to change hardware and reactivate is enticing.
I'm thinking I'll create a new account. That shouldn't link anything.
Nothing is ever simple. I think I may have created an insider account
for this machine. I confirmed that MS already has knowledge of my
hardware. Having two accounts for the same hardware may come
back to bite me in the ass.

Since I disabled the LAN to run the wifi tests, I probably did
change the hash. I have had activation issues on XP when the lan chip
couldn't remember it's MAC address. I had to manually re-enter the
MAC address into the lan setup. But the damage had been done and I
had to activate. I've never had an issue with just disabling and
re-enabling the lan with device manager...until now.

Some days, I just want to curl up into a ball and hug my VIC-20.
Good times...

Mike,

After some further digging I read that activation problems are tied to
"motherboard" changes (their words) and that you can only move the digital
licensed Win10 once to new hardware (total different machine). But... they
recognize that changing hardware can cause activation issues but they don't
go into details other than to say - motherboard and that you can use the
manual activation tools and/or their Chat service.

As for wiping out the Win7 install I think that’s a case of Win10 finding to
boot records and slams the door on the older windows of version. I've had
that happen and I use EasyBCD to correct those kinds of issues.

Once you connected to the web with Win10, I think that’s when you ran up
against the rule of moving Win10 once to another system and having to do a
manual activation procedure.

While MS methods to insure against pirated copies, etc., they do seem to
cause other unintentional problems for legit licenses. They list how each
license is able to be activated (digital license or Product Key) and what
procedures need to be followed when it doesn't activate with the bail-out
being, call the Manual Activation line.

I did not save all the URL's when reading bits and pieces but they were from
links on the pages I included.

Bottom line, I think you triggered both the "hardware change" and the "one
time move" in one felled swoop.
--


Bob S.

On 4/13/2018 10:21 PM, Bob_S wrote:
"mike" wrote in message news

On 4/13/2018 6:57 PM, Bob_S wrote:


Mike,

Don't have a fix but I've had a similar experience with my dozen or so
win10 variants in VM's. Each of those was a TechNet license that were
for the various flavors of Win7. So I made a VM of each and the
upgraded each to it's Win10 equivalent when Win10 came out. As each new
version came out I upgraded several VM's to the latest version.

I started with win7, upgraded to win10 to get the digital entitlement,
then wiped the disk and reinstalled 10 from scratch. I hoped that
would remove any residual win7 licensing issues. Seems to have worked
until now.

So now I have versions 1511, 1607, 1703 and 1709 with still some VM's
yet to be upgraded from 1511. So I tried one last week and after
upgrading, I got the same not activated situation and could not get it
activated. I deleted that VM.

Made another VM using a Win10 image on a USB drive (ver 1511) and it
activated. Same hardware same VM configuration.

Checked other VM's after doing online updates and they all showed as
activated before upgrading and one or two had to be activated manually
while others simply auto activated.

OK, but I had a working updated system that just lost activation.
The relevant events were lan/wifi related.
And let's not forget that it also trashed the win7 on a different hard
drive. I don't believe in coincidence.

So it would appear that the anomaly is at the MS end as you also
experienced. Since these were VM's just to use for testing purposes, I
didn't really dig in but went searching and found this

My concern is whether booting a different win10 drive will re-introduce
the failure mode and cause the working drives to
lose activation...again.
Anything recoverable is not a problem. I'm concerned about triggering
some MS limitation or piracy sensor that locks me out permanently.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...s-why-activate

And this
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ardware-change

which may help you.

Thanks, I'd found both of those.
I haven't decided what to do about the second one.
I really don't want a microsoft account. Those things tend to try to
sync all your devices. That's the last thing I need.
The ability to change hardware and reactivate is enticing.
I'm thinking I'll create a new account. That shouldn't link anything.
Nothing is ever simple. I think I may have created an insider account
for this machine. I confirmed that MS already has knowledge of my
hardware. Having two accounts for the same hardware may come
back to bite me in the ass.

Since I disabled the LAN to run the wifi tests, I probably did
change the hash. I have had activation issues on XP when the lan chip
couldn't remember it's MAC address. I had to manually re-enter the
MAC address into the lan setup. But the damage had been done and I
had to activate. I've never had an issue with just disabling and
re-enabling the lan with device manager...until now.

Some days, I just want to curl up into a ball and hug my VIC-20.
Good times...

Mike,

After some further digging I read that activation problems are tied to
"motherboard" changes (their words) and that you can only move the
digital licensed Win10 once to new hardware (total different machine).
But... they recognize that changing hardware can cause activation issues
but they don't go into details other than to say - motherboard and that
you can use the manual activation tools and/or their Chat service.

OK, but there is and has always been ONE motherboard. And all the drives
were cloned from the original install. And have been working through
many updates.

As for wiping out the Win7 install I think that’s a case of Win10
finding to boot records and slams the door on the older windows of
version. I've had that happen and I use EasyBCD to correct those kinds
of issues.
That's why I do installs with the win7 drive disconnected.
Restoring a backup never had that problem.
I don't think that EasyBCD would have helped. There's the matter
of the 15GB of content just gone. Only 5GB remaining used on C:.
I'd try a PLOP boot manager
boot, as an experiment, but that win7 drive has been restored already.

Once you connected to the web with Win10, I think that’s when you ran up
against the rule of moving Win10 once to another system and having to do
a manual activation procedure.
Sounds rational. Corrupting the MAC address could have signaled a new
motherboard. But, as I said earlier in the thread, the activation
troubleshooter
seemed to be happy that my hardware was consistent with the data they had
on file. They didn't like the VERSION of windows 10 and insisted that I
install win10 pro, which is what I had.
And a brand new install just activated without incident.
I hate experiments that appear to reach mutually exclusive conclusions.

While MS methods to insure against pirated copies, etc., they do seem to
cause other unintentional problems for legit licenses. They list how
each license is able to be activated (digital license or Product Key)
and what procedures need to be followed when it doesn't activate with
the bail-out being, call the Manual Activation line.

I used to not worry about that. On win XP, at the time I had the
flakey MAC address, I'd just fix the MAC and activate it again.
One day, it didn't
work because I had exceeded the permissible number of activations.
I didn't worry about it because I had a pile of keys.
It did motivate me to disable the internal LAN and add a PCI LAN card.

For win10, I don't have a pile of keys to fall back on.
And there should be no reason, because they already agree that my
hardware has digital entitlement.

I don't think we'll ever know the answer.
I'm just paranoid enough to wipe all the experimental disks,
reinstall everything onto the new install, then backup/restore
that to the test disks.
But I think I'll wait until after the impending disaster coming
this month with the new stuff.
I'm very glad I didn't drink the KoolAid and try to use WIN 10
on a mission critical system.

Thanks for trying.

I did not save all the URL's when reading bits and pieces but they were
from links on the pages I included.

Bottom line, I think you triggered both the "hardware change" and the
"one time move" in one felled swoop.

On 4/14/2018 9:25 AM, Good Guy wrote:

there are alternatives such as Linux Junk or that wonderful
Windows clone called ReactOS. Both are free and no activation is required.

Cool.
Please post your personal experiences with ReactOS.
Is it everything you ever wanted?
Be as thorough as you like. I got time.

I'd have to agree that linux is junk. But Win10 is catching up
fast. Won't be long before linux will look like a step up.

On 04/14/2018 02:49 PM, Good Guy wrote:
I'dÂ*haveÂ*toÂ*agreeÂ*thatÂ*linuxÂ*isÂ*junk.Â*Â*Bu tÂ*Win10Â*isÂ*catchingÂ*up
fast.Â*Â*Won'tÂ*beÂ*longÂ*beforeÂ*linuxÂ*willÂ*loo kÂ*likeÂ*aÂ*stepÂ*up.

I know you just praise and love Windows 10. You push it like drugs.

In fairness, I use windows 10 now and then, but I moved to Linux 3 years
ago in reaction to all this Windows 10 phone home scare. I have none of
the issues I constantly read about. I get the software reported to me
in a list that I can see piece by piece what is getting installed and
can opt out of any, not that some I know why I would.

Other than it's not as robust in software offerings as Windows is, it
does have everything I want, be it that my needs are modest.

On 14/04/2018 20:29, Big Al wrote:
On 04/14/2018 02:49 PM, Good Guy wrote:
I'd have to agree that linux is junk. But Win10 is catching up
fast. Won't be long before linux will look like a step up.

I know you just praise and love Windows 10. You push it like drugs.

In fairness, I use windows 10 now and then, but I moved to Linux 3
years ago in reaction to all this Windows 10 phone home scare. I have
none of the issues I constantly read about. I get the software
reported to me in a list that I can see piece by piece what is getting
installed and can opt out of any, not that some I know why I would.

Other than it's not as robust in software offerings as Windows is, it
does have everything I want, be it that my needs are modest.


Are you responding to me or have you forgotten your meds today?

I didn't write that quote so you must be on something today!!!!!!!!

I always get people here who likes my nym so they decide to impersonate
me. Hey, that's the biggest flattery I can get here because not many
people are supposed to read any of my posts. I post them for my own
records!!!!!!!!!!!!

Only the idiots will spend time reading my posts!!!!


/--- This email has been checked for viruses by
Windows Defender software.
//https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/comprehensive-security/


--
With over 600 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

On 04/14/2018 03:36 PM, Good Guy wrote:
Are you responding to me or have you forgotten your meds today?

I didn't write that quote so you must be on something today!!!!!!!!
You're right, it should have been mike. And yes, I'm having a slow day
today! :-)

On 4/13/2018 5:50 PM, mike wrote:

Dell Optiplex 360 legacy BIOS

Win 10 pro 1609.16299.192 activated with digital entitlement.


I thought I'd try to help the wifi speed thread.
I disabled my lan interface and plugged in a
TP-Link TL-WDN3200 USB2 WiFi interface.
Did some file transfer speed tests at 2.4 GHz.
using the default win10 driver with success.
I tried to connect at 5 GHz. and the system locked up.

I pulled the wifi and tried to shutdown.
It hung at the blue screen "shutting down" for
a long time and I had to cut the power.
Rebooted.
After a lot of churning it came up.
Now, the status page says, "Windows is not activated."
Re-enabled the LAN so windows can call home and rebooted.
The status page still says, "Windows is not activated."

Pulled the plug-in win10 drive and attempted to boot the
internal win7 drive. It won't boot at all.
Tried letting macrium fix boot issues. No success.
I booted macrium rescue again. Looked at the root
directory of C:. The directories looked good, but
there was 15GB less drive space used.
Restored a backup and win7 now seems to be working OK.

I physically disconnected the win7 drive.

Plugged in a DIFFERENT win10 drive.
"Windows is not activated"

Restored a recent win10 backup.
Now, it says "Connect to the web to activate windows."
But I am connected to the web. I've seen this message
before, but it always activated within a few minutes.
Not this time.

I turned off all the update tweaks I can remember. NO help.

Tried to activate online. "Windows cannot connect to
activation server." That was the clue that it might be
a windows update issue. Maybe MS found a way to discourage
use of update blockers ;-)

Tried windows update mini tool. Some updates worked, but the 03/13/18
cumulative update will not download.
Hours later, the 4/10/18 cumulative update showed up in place of the
03/13/18
update and installed. Maybe I just caught it in transition.

Ran windows activation troubleshooter.
Result was, (paraphrasing)
"we found a win 10 pro digital license for this device,
you need to install windows 10 pro..."

System status says: Win 10 pro 64-bit.
winver says 1609.16299.192.


Wiped the drive and did fresh install of win10-64 pro v1609.
Windows is activated.

In summary...WTF?

This is a test system, so it's not the end of the world.
The big deal is that I can't rely on win10 as a daily driver.
System hozed, restoring backup doesn't fix it.
Not only did it hoze win10, but also trashed the other
win7 drive on the system.

Win7 and win10 were each installed
with the other disconnected, so there should be no boot
interactions other than BIOS boot order settings and F12
one-time boot menu.

I have several plug-in win10 clone drives for this machine
that I've been using to test various compatibility issues.
I'm afraid to plug one of them in for fear of borking the system
again. Research for this uncovered that there's limit on the
number of times windows can be activated. No clue what
increments that counter. I'm slamming different boot drives
with different operating systems multiple times a day into
this test system. No complete destruction or activation issues
until today.

I did uncover another interesting windows update quirk.
When you run Windows Update MiniTool.cmd
it runs wub.exe to enable updates and starts
wumt_x64.exe
with the selection for windows updates automatic enabled.
I've been setting that back to notify every time.
When wumt closes, it runs wub.exe to block updates.

If you run wumt_64.exe directly, it comes up with windows updates
not set to automatic. Not clear whether it remembers the
last setting or decides some other way.

Point is that maybe I don't need wub.exe at all.
Maybe I don't need any of the other update constraining techniques.

Just let windows notify about needing updates, but use wumt
to do them.

I'm gonna try using ONLY wumt_64.exe and not mess with any
of the other update settings.

Anyhoo, back to the clusterbork in hand...

What I'd like is to get back activated versions of the test
drive(s) I spent so much effort configuring. I'm afraid to go too
far down the rabbit hole for fear of losing the ability to get
an activated fresh install.
All the test drives (one at a time) have been working fine in this
machine and never plugged into any other machine.

The trashed win10 drive can't have any effect on a different win10
cloned drive what wasn't plugged in...or a backup
that was archived elsewhere. It had to have something to
do with something getting changed on the MS end of the
activation system.

In summary...WTF?

Ideas?




I have one computer that has a bunch of hard drives that I swap in
and out.
I checked them all.
All of the win7 32/64 drives are still activated.
All of the win10 32 drives are still activated.

All of the win10 64 drives are NOT activated.
They had the similar symptom, "windows not activated."
Activation troubleshooter insists that I need to load
win10/64 onto my win10/64 disks.

I did an update from the 1709 install media.
Windows not activated.

I wiped the drive and installed the same 1709/64bit fresh.
Windows IS activated.

I dug deeper into the backups and restored a 10/64bit
from January 2018, prior to the latest round of update mitigation
experiments. It restored fine and IS activated.

During all this, I noticed that the system clock said 6AM,
but it was still dark outside. It was only 3AM.
Kinda like what happens when you multi-boot linux on GMT.
Hmmmm.
I checked the CMOS battery. 2.82 Volts.
Looked all through the CMOS setup. Everything looked good.

I changed the CMOS battery and redid all the settings.

Now, my formerly unactivated win10/64 disk does boot up activated.
I'd already fixed the rest, so one data point is all I have.

I'm profoundly unsatisfied by all this inconsistent data.

But, if it's working, I should just move on.

Roseanne Roseannadanna might have said,
"Well, Mike, it just goes to show you, it's always something — if it
ain't one thing, it's another."

mike wrote:
On 4/13/2018 5:50 PM, mike wrote:

Dell Optiplex 360 legacy BIOS

Win 10 pro 1609.16299.192 activated with digital entitlement.


I thought I'd try to help the wifi speed thread.
I disabled my lan interface and plugged in a
TP-Link TL-WDN3200 USB2 WiFi interface.
Did some file transfer speed tests at 2.4 GHz.
using the default win10 driver with success.
I tried to connect at 5 GHz. and the system locked up.

I pulled the wifi and tried to shutdown.
It hung at the blue screen "shutting down" for
a long time and I had to cut the power.
Rebooted.
After a lot of churning it came up.
Now, the status page says, "Windows is not activated."
Re-enabled the LAN so windows can call home and rebooted.
The status page still says, "Windows is not activated."

Pulled the plug-in win10 drive and attempted to boot the
internal win7 drive. It won't boot at all.
Tried letting macrium fix boot issues. No success.
I booted macrium rescue again. Looked at the root
directory of C:. The directories looked good, but
there was 15GB less drive space used.
Restored a backup and win7 now seems to be working OK.

I physically disconnected the win7 drive.

Plugged in a DIFFERENT win10 drive.
"Windows is not activated"

Restored a recent win10 backup.
Now, it says "Connect to the web to activate windows."
But I am connected to the web. I've seen this message
before, but it always activated within a few minutes.
Not this time.

I turned off all the update tweaks I can remember. NO help.

Tried to activate online. "Windows cannot connect to
activation server." That was the clue that it might be
a windows update issue. Maybe MS found a way to discourage
use of update blockers ;-)

Tried windows update mini tool. Some updates worked, but the 03/13/18
cumulative update will not download.
Hours later, the 4/10/18 cumulative update showed up in place of the
03/13/18
update and installed. Maybe I just caught it in transition.

Ran windows activation troubleshooter.
Result was, (paraphrasing)
"we found a win 10 pro digital license for this device,
you need to install windows 10 pro..."

System status says: Win 10 pro 64-bit.
winver says 1609.16299.192.


Wiped the drive and did fresh install of win10-64 pro v1609.
Windows is activated.

In summary...WTF?

This is a test system, so it's not the end of the world.
The big deal is that I can't rely on win10 as a daily driver.
System hozed, restoring backup doesn't fix it.
Not only did it hoze win10, but also trashed the other
win7 drive on the system.

Win7 and win10 were each installed
with the other disconnected, so there should be no boot
interactions other than BIOS boot order settings and F12
one-time boot menu.

I have several plug-in win10 clone drives for this machine
that I've been using to test various compatibility issues.
I'm afraid to plug one of them in for fear of borking the system
again. Research for this uncovered that there's limit on the
number of times windows can be activated. No clue what
increments that counter. I'm slamming different boot drives
with different operating systems multiple times a day into
this test system. No complete destruction or activation issues
until today.

I did uncover another interesting windows update quirk.
When you run Windows Update MiniTool.cmd
it runs wub.exe to enable updates and starts
wumt_x64.exe
with the selection for windows updates automatic enabled.
I've been setting that back to notify every time.
When wumt closes, it runs wub.exe to block updates.

If you run wumt_64.exe directly, it comes up with windows updates
not set to automatic. Not clear whether it remembers the
last setting or decides some other way.

Point is that maybe I don't need wub.exe at all.
Maybe I don't need any of the other update constraining techniques.

Just let windows notify about needing updates, but use wumt
to do them.

I'm gonna try using ONLY wumt_64.exe and not mess with any
of the other update settings.

Anyhoo, back to the clusterbork in hand...

What I'd like is to get back activated versions of the test
drive(s) I spent so much effort configuring. I'm afraid to go too
far down the rabbit hole for fear of losing the ability to get
an activated fresh install.
All the test drives (one at a time) have been working fine in this
machine and never plugged into any other machine.

The trashed win10 drive can't have any effect on a different win10
cloned drive what wasn't plugged in...or a backup
that was archived elsewhere. It had to have something to
do with something getting changed on the MS end of the
activation system.

In summary...WTF?

Ideas?




I have one computer that has a bunch of hard drives that I swap in
and out.
I checked them all.
All of the win7 32/64 drives are still activated.
All of the win10 32 drives are still activated.

All of the win10 64 drives are NOT activated.
They had the similar symptom, "windows not activated."
Activation troubleshooter insists that I need to load
win10/64 onto my win10/64 disks.

I did an update from the 1709 install media.
Windows not activated.

I wiped the drive and installed the same 1709/64bit fresh.
Windows IS activated.

I dug deeper into the backups and restored a 10/64bit
from January 2018, prior to the latest round of update mitigation
experiments. It restored fine and IS activated.

During all this, I noticed that the system clock said 6AM,
but it was still dark outside. It was only 3AM.
Kinda like what happens when you multi-boot linux on GMT.
Hmmmm.
I checked the CMOS battery. 2.82 Volts.
Looked all through the CMOS setup. Everything looked good.

I changed the CMOS battery and redid all the settings.

Now, my formerly unactivated win10/64 disk does boot up activated.
I'd already fixed the rest, so one data point is all I have.

I'm profoundly unsatisfied by all this inconsistent data.

But, if it's working, I should just move on.

Roseanne Roseannadanna might have said,
"Well, Mike, it just goes to show you, it's always something — if it
ain't one thing, it's another."

It happens.

https://www.sevenforums.com/windows-...ctivation.html

Or

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/...ivation-errors

"0x80072F8F You might see this error if the date and time for the PC is incorrect"

That doesn't explain how time is important to all this.

Paul