Windows 10 suddenly deactivated

Sumit 44,306 Volunteer Moderator

Hi,

There is an ongoing issue about Windows 10 suddenly shown as deactivated. T~~he 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.)

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

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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466 additional answers

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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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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Anonymous

2018-11-09T17:57:30+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...

I upgraded during the free upgrades and thought my key was deactivated forever and installed windows 7 so i could have a secure OS on my system now i am hearing it was done to many people. I thought maybe since i upgraded free they decided to revoke my key.

I want my windows 10 back i did nothing wrong. I have no way of fixing this and do not have the money to buy a new copy of windows 10 it is over 100$
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Anonymous

2018-11-09T18:33:18+00:00

No need to worry that much since this is not users problem, instead Microsoft Activation Server. For those unresolved cases, you may contact our chat support line https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus/

or phone this number inside US. 1-800-642-7676

Troubleshooting steps available that may fix the problem ;

* Go to your Computer settings > update and security > Activation > run the Activation troubleshooter.

* If the license of your windows 10 still available , you may press windows Key + R on your keyboard > once run box is up , type in SLUI3 then use your windows 10 license or if it was from lower version you may use it too and activate from there.

Hope this will help. :))
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