I had a failure of my motherboard on my workstation which is running the current Dev build of Windows 11 Pro for Workstations Insider Preview. I physically replaced the motherboard with the exact same board, exact same revision of the board (there are only 2), with the exact same bios revision. Nothing else was changed, all PCIe cards in the same slots, nothing added, nothing deleted, just a plain simple swap out of the motherboard. I fired it up , checked all bios settings and booted into Windows. Windows told me it was not only NOT activated, but that it could not find a product key. And even though I was logged into my Microsoft account, Windows said no digital license was linked to my account. After numerous tries to find what the root of the problem was, I gave up and just ran the activation troubleshooter and told it I was running new hardware. That solved the problem in just a few seconds and a digital license is again linked to my Microsoft account and Windows is activated (and apparently Windows could now find a product key, since there were no more complaints about that). Now I do understand changing hardware can require re-activation of Windows, but this seems a little extreme, since the only real hardware change was the serial number of the motherboard and everything else remained as before. Has this happened to anyone else? Comments?
isn't it completely normal? exact same board rev or version or not. it is a completely new hardware. and the most imp hardware of all. i don't think microsoft bothers to get version numbers. just serial number will be enough for them to create unique hwid id for your computer.
Even when the boards are the same, the hwids guid's etcetc... will be different and then a new activation is required.
Here is the place of thinking. Did you put a new motherboard in your old computer case or did you used an old case for a new computer? (Perhaps more simply, which is more correct: the glass is half full or the glass is half empty?) In fact, you built a new computer and used the old case on it, but any new computer needs a new registration.