"Your Windows License Will Expire Soon"

LadyMorticia

Hey everyone.

I have a Lenovo Ideapad 510P. It shipped with Windows 8. It's about 4 years old.

Earlier this year, the harddrive decided to give up the ghost and I paid the local computer guy to install a new one for me (it ended up being a lower capacity harddrive, but annoyed me but c'est la vie.)

When he installed the new HDD he put Windows 10 on it.

Everything was working fine, but now I keep getting a pop up which says "Your Windows licence will expire soon. Please activate in settings" or something to that effect.

I went into settings and it says it's Windows 10 Home but it also says "windows is activated using your organization's activation service." I'm not entirely sure what this means.

Does this mean that the copy of Windows 10 I have isn't legit? Or, if it is, how do I get rid of this annoying message which is now popping up every 5 minutes and is becoming very obtrusive.

If it isn't a legit copy, where is the best place to buy a legit copy from?

Thank you.

unforeseen

It isn't legit in your situation because it is expecting to validate the key against a company KMS system.

To get a valid copy of Win 10 go to https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/accessibility/windows10upgrade

Forgot to say that you might need to wipe the copy of Win 10 that you have and install win 8.1 first. The serial for this should be built in. Win 8.1 can be downloaded from https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows8ISO

LadyMorticia

unforeseen wrote: »

It isn't legit in your situation because it is expecting to validate the key against a company KMS system.

To get a valid copy of Win 10 go to https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/accessibility/windows10upgrade

Forgot to say that you might need to wipe the copy of Win 10 that you have and install win 8.1 first. The serial for this should be built in. Win 8.1 can be downloaded from https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows8ISO

Thank you very much.

Jivesinger

Windows 8 has an automatic free upgrade to Windows 10 anyway, and last I heard it still worked without requiring the accessibility workaround.

I think it's just a case of getting the correct edition of Windows 10 (which matches the edition of Windows 8 originally installed), and then the Windows 10 installer will probably read the key off the motherboard when it's installed.

As suggested it's probably a good idea to wipe the suspect copy of Windows 10 though - take a backup first!

unforeseen

Free upgrade routes have now finished apart from the accessibility route.

You will need to install Win 8 and allow it to activate before you can successfully install via the accessibility route.

The win 8 key built in will not be recognised as valid for win 10.

LadyMorticia

unforeseen wrote: »

Free upgrade routes have now finished apart from the accessibility route.

You will need to install Win 8 and allow it to activate before you can successfully install via the accessibility route.

The win 8 key built in will not be recognised as valid for win 10.

Will the Windows 8 key still be recognised if I have had a new harddrive? Sorry, I'm usually good with computers but alas, not this time!

System

unforeseen wrote: »

Free upgrade routes have now finished apart from the accessibility route.
.

No they haven't. I've installed Windows 10 Pro on half a dozen machines with bare hard drives this week using the Windows 7 Pro product key attached to the machine.

No need to install Win7 first and use the accessibility route, I just entered the Win7 Pro product key on installation and it automatically activated when it got online.

henm2

I would not faff about with Windows. Install instead Linux Mint 18.2 cinnamon edition. A much better operating system.

System

henm2 wrote: »

I would not faff about with Windows. Install instead Linux Mint 18.2 cinnamon edition. A much better operating system.

There are as many ways it is worse as there are it is better. Use two network connections in a PC running Mint, assign one of them the correct IP address of your router as the gateway, assign the other one a gateway address with no internet access. See if you can access the internet. Works OK in Windows, doesn't in Linux. You need to remove the gateway entry that has no internet access in one of the network cards which the Network Manager won't let you do without a fight.

WAYT

Win10_1703_English International_x64.iso

forgotmyname

unforeseen wrote: »

Free upgrade routes have now finished apart from the accessibility route.

You will need to install Win 8 and allow it to activate before you can successfully install via the accessibility route.

The win 8 key built in will not be recognised as valid for win 10.

Wrong. I installed windows 10 a month or so back without having to install windows 7.

I used an old Windows 7 serial to download windows 10 onto a new Ryzen PC. It downloaded, installed and activated with no issues.