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#1
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activation error 0xC004F050
Just took delivery yesterday 04/03/2019 - of my brand new (sealed in
box) Lenovo T480s i7 Laptop. Spent 1/2 a day configuring, updating to 1809 etc., Less than 24 hours later I notice :- “activation error 0xC004F050” in :- Settings\Update & Security\Activation (RHS middle of the page) – however at the top of the page it also says “Windows is activated with a digital license” IS THIS NORMAL ??? – otherwise I’m at a loss to understand how this could have happened, the Win10 Pro factory install & few programs I have installed are all completely legitimate – (i.e.) Pale Moon, Sophos Anti-Virus, Adobe DC, Office 2003 and Macrium Reflect – which I used to create my 1st backUp. I have seen this error notification before - on other computers & was never able to find a solution – however this is the 1st time on a brand new “out of the box” computer. Guidance, comments or assistance gratefully received. P.S.: I do not & never have had a Microsoft Account – nor do I want my name being on the MS database. |
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#2
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activation error 0xC004F050
Yarwell wrote:
P.S.: I do not & never have had a Microsoft Account – nor do I want my name being on the MS database. Use a fake/throwaway email address... |
#3
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activation error 0xC004F050
Yarwell wrote:
Just took delivery yesterday 04/03/2019 - of my brand new (sealed in box) Lenovo T480s i7 Laptop. Spent 1/2 a day configuring, updating to 1809 etc., Less than 24 hours later I notice :- “activation error 0xC004F050” in :- Settings\Update & Security\Activation (RHS middle of the page) – however at the top of the page it also says “Windows is activated with a digital license” IS THIS NORMAL ??? – otherwise I’m at a loss to understand how this could have happened, the Win10 Pro factory install & few programs I have installed are all completely legitimate – (i.e.) Pale Moon, Sophos Anti-Virus, Adobe DC, Office 2003 and Macrium Reflect – which I used to create my 1st backUp. I have seen this error notification before - on other computers & was never able to find a solution – however this is the 1st time on a brand new “out of the box” computer. Guidance, comments or assistance gratefully received. P.S.: I do not & never have had a Microsoft Account – nor do I want my name being on the MS database. I can try and explain how it works, but you'll have to fill in the details (debug it) yourself. In the old days, laptops from OEMs used the "SLIC" method. SLIC is an ACPI table, passed from the BIOS to the OS at boot time. SLIC contains a table that says "I'm a Lenovo computer". It might take 10KB of information to say that, and presumably some crypto is involved. Even non-branded computing devices have a SLIC table, but those tables contain "digital noise" and don't do anything. In the case of SLIC, the SLIC table doesn't have a license key. The OS on the other hand, has a "generic" "Lenovo" key. The combination of "Lenovo key" plus "I'm a Lenovo computer" results in... activation. A benefit of this scheme, is SLIC allows you to use multiple Lenovo OSes. You could use Lenovo WinXP, Vista, Win7 on your laptop if it has a Lenovo SLIC. All you need, is hardware drivers (usually that's the sticking point). ******* OK, fast forward to Win8 and Win10. The table in the BIOS changed to MSDM. MSDM contains an actual key, and the key value is "unique" on each computer. This is why there is *no* COA sticker on your computer. Since the key is stored in the BIOS, there's no sticker to get scratched up and destroyed. It also means, the key is for a specific OS. If it wasn't for the "free upgrade" scheme we use today to get Win10, the Win8 key on a Win8 laptop, would only be usable for Win8. The MSDM table and the key it contains, are really only intended to activate *one* version of OS. But, due to the mechanics of the Free Upgrade, it's also possible for an MSDM Win8 key to cause an installation of Windows 10 to work. But if Microsoft makes Windows 11 tomorrow, the MSDM key you've got, won't necessarily activate it. The MSDM method isn't quite as generous. ******* When you get a new computer, it's in OOBE state. (Out of Box Experience state.) It doesn't have a user account set up yet. That's one way to tell, whether the Best Buy put a customer return back into the box, without resealing or restoring the factory setup. On a new computer, you should be prompted for account details. If you "pull the network plug", Windows 10 will be less pestilent about setting up a Microsoft Account, and that can make it easier to set up a Local Account. You can switch to an MSA later, for access to purchases from the Win10 Store, or to use Cloud features. Usually, messing around with the two account types, results in problems with the name of the home directory, or with getting file sharing to work right (without having to log in to other machines on your LAN and losing easy double-click navigation). OK, so we've filled in our account name and some other details. Now, the OS isn't activated when in the OOBE state. It considers its options. Since this is Windows 10, it "sniffs" for MSDM. If it finds one, it uploads the key, and can make a claim that a digital entitlement has been registered with the Microsoft server. My guess is, the process is an interactive one, and all that's wrong is that some part of the MS Server is overloaded, and that's where the goofy status is coming from. If you had set up an MSA and activated the machine, I don't know how the MS license server handles a "change of ownership" where a new MSA is referenced to a particular MSDM key. (Like, say a customer returns a machine to Best Buy and had activated "Wally" MSA against "Key 1234". Then you come along and run the OOBE when you get what you think is a brand new machine, and activate "Yarwell" MSA against "Key 1234". I don't know how the server handles that case.) When there are licensing issues, a Microsoft phone support person can use the MSA, to bring up the licensing details of the machine on their screen. If you used a Local Account, it's not the end of the world, but there would be one less thing for the Support to use. ******* This article shows someone wanting a copy of their license key (without using MagicalJellyBean or some newer tool that knows MSDM). This is a relatively "plaintext" way to do it. https://superuser.com/questions/6379...ux-environment You could extract that key and feed it to the OS. There should be a license key change dialog in there somewhere, and you could try passing it the MSDM key value. ******* To learn more about your OS: 1) Right-click Start, then Run, then run "control" When the Control Panel opens on the Task Bar, right click the icon and select "Pin to TaskBar". This will give you easy future access to Control Panels (it's no longer in the menu). In Control Panels, execute "System". In there, you will find a declaration of what version of Windows you're running, including the "bitness". It's likely x64 and using 64-bit instructions. 2) Start : Run : "winver" will tell you the major release and the patch level. 3) If you enter Setup Wheel, you can change the shell window from Powershell, back to Command Prompt. Then, when you right click Start orb, you will see "Command Prompt" and "Administrator Command Prompt" as options. Using some flavor of Command Prompt, you can try slmgr /dlv which will dump information on your license status. The GUI of course, works just as well for this purpose. But, the command is available if you want to try, 4) Some flavor of slui 4 or similar, may allow changing the license key. This might be reserved for cases where you have the MSDM key in hand, and want to try your hand at pretending "it's a new key". Do a Google and see if that's the correct option. I don't have a table of values. Anyway, I don't think there is a reason to panic quite yet. The grace period is 30 days. And Windows 10 doesn't behave quite as nasty as some of the previous OSes. If your status doesn't clear in a couple days, post back. Since you've invested your time and energy putting programs on the machine, take that backup hard drive you bought and do a backup of C: now. That way, if your attempts to fiddle with the license key make things worse for any reason, just restore from backup. If you need free backup software, there is this. And yes, you do want to make the emergency boot CD when it prompts you, as you cannot put C: back on the computer from your backup, unless you boot from the emergency CD (or equivalent). https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree No matter what backup product you're happy with, *always* make the emergency CD for it. Or, you will be sorry later. I generally recommend buying a "six pack" of optical media when buying a new computer. That will give sufficient materials to do any backups on the first day, that the machine might request. But if you're going to that much trouble, you might was well buy a "stubby cake box" of media, as you will inevitably run into more things you should be backing up or making. The stores don't have good selections of media any more (I can't get Ritek now, only some CMC which isn't as good). If purchasing tablets or smaller devices without optical drive, you can purchase a portable optical drive, or switch to USB sticks. There aren't really very good quality USB sticks any more (the latest Sandisk Extreme I bought, turned out to be a pig). Paul |
#4
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activation error 0xC004F050
On 05/03/2019 15:19, Yarwell wrote:
Guidance, comments or assistance gratefully received. For a genuine big brand machine, you don't have to do anything. It just activates in the background. Just create your two local accounts (you don't need a Microsoft Account to use a machine) and that's it. there is nothing else for you to do on it. You get automatic updates and it also activates in the background. You must be coming from that junk OS so you start fiddling the settings and you;ll find it doesn't work. Windows is supposed to work out of the box. Stupid users start messing around and their machine becomes unusable. Path: aioe.org!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Yarwell Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-10 Subject: activation error 0xC004F050 Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2019 15:19:34 +0000 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 27 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2019 15:19:35 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="e3806700591dbb3db741762b9241e178"; logging-data="19707"; "; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/SUkZnuPSJSQktkTsnT+zwMssPdgA6ekg=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.5.1 Cancel-Lock: sha1:VUNKP/gJ1clT51hUWcBWnAfWy40= Content-Language: en-US X-Mozilla-News-Host: news://news.eternal-september.org:119 Xref: aioe.org alt.comp.os.windows-10:87088 -- With over 950 million devices now running Windows 10, customer satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows. |
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