Hi,
I bought a used Dell Vostro PC with Windows 7 Pro last November which after 3 months of working fine started to show' activation needed' warnings. As the machine had some bloatware I decided to do a fresh re-install of Windows 7 Pro with my system disk last Feb. All proceeded well although I had to activate by phone.
Then yesterday for the first time since re-installation, I'm suddenly getting a warning notice that W7 needs to be activated again. On looking at System it shows I'm not activated. But, when I reboot then System shows I am activated with a genuine Microsoft badge. I've scanned for viruses with MSE and Malwarebytes, but nothing showed up. One thing I noticed was that all my Restore points had been wiped out when this problem began yesterday. When I booted up today I checked my activation which was good, until an hour ago when again I got a message that I was not activated which was confirmed on System and that I needed to activate by today. I rebooted and once again I'm 'activated'. Please note I haven't changed any hardware since I bought the PC.
I phoned Microsoft who confirmed my product key was genuine but couldn't explain why I was having this issue. I have got 2 separate images of my system to use when I wasn't having activation trouble, but I'd be grateful if someone could perhaps enlighten me as to why this activation problem is occurring.
I bought a used Dell Vostro PC with Windows 7 Pro last November which after 3 months of working fine started to show' activation needed' warnings. As the machine had some bloatware I decided to do a fresh re-install of Windows 7 Pro with my system disk last Feb. All proceeded well although I had to activate by phone.
Then yesterday for the first time since re-installation, I'm suddenly getting a warning notice that W7 needs to be activated again. On looking at System it shows I'm not activated. But, when I reboot then System shows I am activated with a genuine Microsoft badge. I've scanned for viruses with MSE and Malwarebytes, but nothing showed up. One thing I noticed was that all my Restore points had been wiped out when this problem began yesterday. When I booted up today I checked my activation which was good, until an hour ago when again I got a message that I was not activated which was confirmed on System and that I needed to activate by today. I rebooted and once again I'm 'activated'. Please note I haven't changed any hardware since I bought the PC.
I phoned Microsoft who confirmed my product key was genuine but couldn't explain why I was having this issue. I have got 2 separate images of my system to use when I wasn't having activation trouble, but I'd be grateful if someone could perhaps enlighten me as to why this activation problem is occurring.
My Computer
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- Dell Vostro
- OS
- Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit, Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit, Linux Mint 20.1 LTS
- CPU
- Intel Core i5-3470 3.2 GHz
- Motherboard
- Intel 7 Series C/216 Chipset
- Memory
- 6GB RAM
- Graphics Card(s)
- Intel HD Graphics
- Monitor(s) Displays
- Asus VC239 (23.5")
- Hard Drives
- Western Digital WD10EZEX 1TB
Western Digital WD3200AAKS 320GB
- PSU
- Corsair 500W
- Antivirus
- Microsoft Essentials, Malwarebytes, Kapersky Rescue Disk
- Browser
- Firefox 87 64 Bit
