Windows Not Activating

Hi All

My new Win 10 PC arrived from PC Specialist yesterday, it all set up OK, powered on etc and then I added an additional SATA hard drive. At some point after this I was trying to chnage the number of icons that appear down near where the time is but it wouldnt allow me as it said the machine is not activated. I try to activate windows and I get a message that says "Windows reported that the hardware of your device has changed. Error code: 0XC004F211" i tried the troubleshoot and I get no options accept go to store. Even the "recently changed hardware on this device" yields no results that help me.

This is a brand new machine fresh out the box, would adding a harddrive invoke the activation thing?

I understand the key is supposed to be hard wired intot he bios, is there a way I can fin dout what this key is?

I didnt get to see if it was activated before adding the hard drive so ive no idea if that changed the state. Any advice welcomed.

steevjp said:

Hi All

My new Win 10 PC arrived from PC Specialist yesterday, it all set up OK, powered on etc and then I added an additional SATA hard drive. At some point after this I was trying to chnage the number of icons that appear down near where the time is but it wouldnt allow me as it said the machine is not activated. I try to activate windows and I get a message that says "Windows reported that the hardware of your device has changed. Error code: 0XC004F211" i tried the troubleshoot and I get no options accept go to store. Even the "recently changed hardware on this device" yields no results that help me.

This is a brand new machine fresh out the box, would adding a harddrive invoke the activation thing?

I understand the key is supposed to be hard wired intot he bios, is there a way I can fin dout what this key is?

I didnt get to see if it was activated before adding the hard drive so ive no idea if that changed the state. Any advice welcomed.

Click to expand...

What are you full specs from your order page and what hard drive did you install into the system?

Did you buy a Windows license with the PC? Since it's a brand new PC I would call PCS as soon as you can - phone them, don't email..

Adding an additional hard drive shouldn't have affected the activation key, which is burned into the motherboard/BIOS (I don't exactly know how or where it's stored).

The Windows system installed by PCS probably wasn't activated because you typically have to go through the initial 'Out Of Box Experience' to set up your userid and region etc. etc.

You might also want so see this site https://support.microsoft.com/en-ph/help/10738/windows-10-get-help-with-activation-errors, though I don't think it's going to help much.

Thanks for the replies ill call PCS Monday

yes I did buy a Windows 10 Licnece with the unit
The hard drive is a 3tb SATA that came out of my old NAS.

Spec is

Case FRACTAL FOCUS G BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor i7-8700 (3.2GHz) 12MB Cache
Motherboard Gigabyte Z390 UD: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM) 16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 8GB AMD RADEON™ RX 580 - HDMI, 3 x DP - DX® 12
1st Storage Drive 2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive 250GB WD Black™ M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3000MB/s R | 1600MB/s W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply CORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling PCS FrostFlow 120 Series High Performance Liquid Cooler
Thermal Paste COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Supplied on DVD

steevjp said:

The hard drive is a 3tb SATA that came out of my old NAS.

Click to expand...

That might be significant. What is on that drive? If you don't need it I would run diskpart and clean the drive then create a single partition and NTFS format ia.

I got my PC yesterday and had the exact same issue. I spoke to the tech guys on the phone and they said it was an issue on Microsofts side. Mine activated this morning, hopefully yours will just sort itself out too.

This is interesting. Microsoft reported that there was an issue with activation servers but that it was limited to Windows 7 and only KMS activations.

Clearly it went deeper than that.

I have the same issue with new machine and I paid for a licence.

I have the same issue with new machine and I paid for a licence.

If you guys rings Microsoft they are able to take remote access and fix the issue for you.