I got my Ryzen 7 mainboard today and swapped it out, and once I got windows running again by resetting my pin and everything, it’s now yelling at me for activation.
It lets me go through the rigamarole and tell it that my hardware changed and then it just… doesn’t work. I select my framework from the list of devices and tell it that it’s the same computer and it just errors. There’s no error code, and it goes so far as to ask me to try again later. I’ve previously changed motherboards (I borked an 11th gen and replaced it with another 11th gen a while back) and it had no issues then, so I don’t know what the problem is.
I originally set it up with a retail key that came with my DIY kit almost two years ago now. I certainly don’t have the key anymore, and I don’t really want to buy another one, it’s the same computer.
I do plan on reusing the old motherboard, so if my only option is to buy a key, fine, but I wanted to see if anyone else has had this issue and have a solution, I know I’m not the first person to switch to Ryzen.
Are you going to keep windows on the old motherboard? If so, you now have two computers. So Microsoft would probably technically / officially want a second windows license. I use Linux, and I’m not a window fan, so personally, I do not feel the price is worth it.
There are… other easy ways of activating. But promotion of that or sharing links is not allowed. At least outside of DMs.
Have you tried the phone activation method? I made sure to keep my retail key and just re-enter it (I believe Framework would have emailed it to you, so there’s a chance it’s still in your email history somewhere?). Otherwise you could try contacting Framework support to see if they keep a record. If none of those options are feasible you may be left with contacting Microsoft themselves to see if they can help you resolve this issue.
If you do transfer the key, it will no longer be associated with your old mainboard, so if you plan to still use Windows on that you’ll need a second key anyway, but I do understand wanting to just transfer the original activation to your new hardware, and the retail key you bought should be transferable, but I would highly recommend keeping your key available in the future if you are able to recover it, as that is the best way to make sure it transfers painlessly.
I’ve been using a Win7 Key on my framework and couldn’t get it to activate, after swapping in the ryzen upgrade board. The old mainboard is now a proxmox host, so the license is not in use anymore.
My solution was to buy a cheap key from a questionable source (not really caring about legality here).
I do plan on still using Windows on the old mainboard once I get my enclosure built, so I’ll just buy another Windows key (though not for $140, jeez), and activate my Ryzen mainboard as another machine in my account.
There are aftermarket places to buy legitimate keys that are sold at bulk discount prices. In the meantime you can just install windows without a key pretty much indefinitely for the moment, until microsoft changes it. Currently it just prevents you from changing some UI features.
