Microsoft's Disappointing Stance on New Motherboards

Recently, a series of events left me with a completely borked computer last week. I am still not very clear on what happened, but the end result is one dead drive, and a boot drive that no longer has a boot record.

It was a Wednesday night, and I got a hankering to play some Audioshield. I pop open Steam, which was installed on one of my two older 1 terabyte Seagate drives, and instead of popping open, my computer just kind of spins it’s tires for a bit. Uh oh, that doesn’t seem good. At some point Windows had downloaded an update. With my computer behaving strangely, I figured it was a good time for a reboot.

Sadly, my computer didn’t want to come back up and I was presented with a S.M.A.R.T error. The drive that had my Steam games installed was toast. I pulled the drive and go to boot back up, but nothing happens. Uh oh, that doesn’t seem good. After a bit of googling on my phone, I tried to troubleshoot the boot issues. Sadly I didn’t manage to get the drive booting again. I guess it is time for a new install.

But wait! My old i5 3570k is getting a bit long in the tooth, and I had been planning to upgrade in the next year or so. Why not upgrade no? Long story short I settled for an Ryzen 3700x, a nice mATX motherboard, and a slick Corsair mini tower. I fire up my usb key and reinstall Windows.

Everything goes well, I log into my account and begin restoring all my stuff.

But wait! Windows is upset and tells me to activate my install. Alrighty, I follow the guide and check off my old PC install to activate, but am told to contact support. Apparently if you have upgraded from Windows 7 using the free upgrade promotion, you need that original key, even if your Windows account shows that you have a copy. Sadly, I have no idea where that key is and have moved across the country twice since I last used it. It is gone.

A grumpy twenty minute conversation with Microsoft support left me unsatisfied and no closer to an activated copy of Windows. My fears that I needed a new Windows license were confirmed, and no amount of prodding got me anywhere near a resolution that didn’t require me to buy a new copy of Windows.

So be careful if you upgrade. If you change your motherboard and upgraded to Windows 10 as part of the free upgrades, make sure you have your key.