Windows 10 suddenly deactivated

Sumit 44,306 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2018-11-08T11:09:46+00:00

Hi,

There is an ongoing issue about Windows 10 suddenly shown as deactivated. The affected users need not to do anything as it is a known issue. Here is what was told by Microsoft Chat support:

Microsoft has just released an Emerging issue announcement about current activation issue related to Pro edition recently. This happens in Japan, Korea, American and many other countries.I am very sorry to inform you that there is a temporary issue with Microsoft's activation server at the moment and some customers might experience this issue where Windows is displayed as not activated.

Our engineers are working tirelessly to resolve this issue and it is expected to be corrected within one to two business days

Thanks to Vijay_Verma and Danielfor the information.

Thanks to PaulSey..., a Microsoft employee in this thread which has explanation about this in more detail:

We are aware of reports that some customers’ Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise machines are not recognizing their licenses as activated. Users may receive the following notification: “Error: you are running Windows 10 Pro, but you have valid digital license for Windows 10 Home," or one of the following error codes 0X803F8001, 0xC004C003.

We are actively working to resolve this within 24 hours. You can still use your PC; however, the watermark will appear until activation is restored. Thank you for your patience.

We will update this post with additional information as needed and once activations are restored.

Edit 1: Users report that Windows activation troubleshooter might say You have a Windows 10 Home license but you are running Windows 10 Pro. You are advised to ignore that message and wait for the fix.


Edit 2: Update as of morning 11/9/2018 Morning EST.

Any affected customer can continue to use Windows 10 Pro as usual, and the watermark will disappear within 24 hours as activation is automatically restored.

To manually resolve the issue:  Select the Start button, select Settings > Update & security > Activation, and then select Troubleshoot to run the Activation Troubleshooter.  (If the device is already activated, the Troubleshoot option will not appear.)

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Licensing and activation

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2018-11-08T21:50:17+00:00

We are aware of reports that some customers’ Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise machines are not recognizing their licenses as activated. Users may receive the following notification: “Error: you are running Windows 10 Pro, but you have valid digital license for Windows 10 Home," or one of the following error codes 0X803F8001, 0xC004C003.

We are actively working to resolve this within 24 hours. You can still use your PC; however, the watermark will appear until activation is restored. Thank you for your patience.

We will update this post with additional information as needed and once activations are restored.

Paul...

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-11-09T17:43:53+00:00

    "We found a Windows 10 Pro digital license for this device runningWindows 10 Pro. To activate using this digital license, you need to installWindows 10 Pro."

    Having the same problem here ... the watermark suddenly appeared on my Surface Laptop and the Troubleshooter tells me I have the 10 Pro digital license on this device running 10 Pro.

    Having the same issue...

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-11-09T17:37:16+00:00

    Running the activation troubleshooter solved this issue for me around 9:30am pacific on 11/09/18. 

    I had to re-install windows 10 pro on a device at work. It had been upgraded to windows 10 pro from windows 7 pro a couple years ago before I worked at this company. I did not have the license key for this machine (no sticker on the case, and there were no records of it). Yesterday, on 11/08/18 after reinstalling windows 10 pro, windows would not activate. When running the activation troubleshooter, the result would tell me "we found a windows 10 home digital license for this device running windows 10 pro. To activate using this digital license, you need to install windows 10 home." This morning the troubleshooter activated the re-installed windows 10 pro installation. 

    This was annoying, and killed some time, but I am glad it is resolved now!

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-11-09T17:13:54+00:00

    How can I stop getting Emails from people replying to this discussion? I keep getting a lot of them and I can't figure out how to shut it off. It says to open discussion then hit the ellipsis  (…) but there is no (…) on the page

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-11-09T17:10:23+00:00

    Issue was fixed for last night, but now when i log into account.microsoft.com and go to my microsoft account -> devices there is this:

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