Originally Posted by
Nopea Ill borrow this topic if you dont mind. I updated 8.1 to w10 and activated it. Then performed clean install. All worked fine. But couple days ago i bought new mobo, processor and ram and did clean install straight. Now w10 wont activate so should i revert back to 8.1 and start all over ?
Well, you changed everything so it's counted as a new computer, someone said just motherboard bridges are counted for the activation, someone said he changed the processor and nothing happened, but changing the motherboard would cause for sure the deactivation.
so you could go back to Windows 8 upgrade, if it complains about the key, you have to call Microsoft and explain them what happened, and you have the same computer but you changed motherboard, they will be nice to you I am sure.
you could also do the same, go to windows 8, but on a different harddrive or partition or sdcard or anything where you can install WIndows, upgrade to windows 10 and activate your new hardware. once you do that, if you go to the clean installed Windows 10, it should say activated because your hardware would be recognized. you can do both, I mean if you clean installed and installed programs and all, and you don't want to go back to windows 8 to go to 10 and then clean install and install everything, you can just use a second partition or an external harddrive or something, just to register your hardware.