![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
So clearly this isn't an isolated incident, just related to one motherboard manufacturer. The operating system should not be invalidated by a motherboard bios update. This never happened with any of my other systems across the years. Microsoft no longer has a support number where you can call an actual person. I went round and round with their "techs" online and none of them could resolve the issue. The first time this happened, after hours of them trying to fix it, they refunded my money and I had to buy another license. The second time they generated a retail key for me. Each time this happened it was right after updating my motherboard bios. At no time did Microsoft ever mention that this was caused by flashing the motherboard. I am now afraid to update my brand new motherboard for fear of this happening again. This is ridiculous because it's a new chipset and will be getting updated frequently. I hope you get it resolved but for me it was a total pita and cost me several hours of my life ! I'm not sure which version of Windows you are running but I can't help but think this may be a ploy to push us into Windows 11 by making Windows 10 unusable...