Windows 10 requires re-activating and unable to

Hi,

I've had Parallels 10 running Windows 8.1, under OSX Yosemite. Windows 8.1 was activated fine. I since upgraded OSX to El Capitan, Windows to 10, and Parallels to 11. Everything now on absolute latest versions at this time. Now, at some point during that process, Windows decided that it wasn't a genuine copy. I think it was upgrading to Parallels 11 that did it, as I hadn't noticed the issue prior, despite there being a few weeks in-between each upgrading each element.

I couldn't tell you the entire history of the Windows copy, except to say that this is the only Windows installation I use. If I've ever had the same copy on any other computer, that computer is unused so I'm happy to make that installation stop working.

I've read a few suggestions for activating Windows 10, some of which suggest "Go to Store". Tried that, but that says that it was not possible to "make your copy of Windows genuine". Clicking "Try again" results in "Your device will be genuine shortly..." being displayed forever, with no progress. It even locks up the "Store" app so that the only way to close it is to force it.

So I've also tried "Change product key" but that just locks the "Settings" app without doing anything at all.

So the only other thing I can try which I've read about, which has been suggested by Microsoft support, is re-installing a fresh copy of Windows 8 (or 8.1) and trying the upgrade process all over again. To me that is a totally unacceptable "solution". Basically, they're expecting honest users to just dump their setup and start again. That's gonna take me days to do, not to mention I'm going to find things I've missed for months to come. Also not that easy when my Mac doesn't have a DVD drive which means I have to transfer my Windows 8 DVD to a USB stick again etc. So many complications and inconvenience that I should not have to put up with. I'd rather just get a cheap Windows PC and dump Parallels altogether.

Apologies if this has already been reported, but I did do a search for the obvious terms on this forum, and surprisingly found nothing. Plenty on "Windows 10" and "activation" separately, but amazingly no results on both combined.

Can anybody please help me make me genuine copy of Windows "genuine" in the eyes of Microsoft?

 

Hello JimR5,
Please follow the steps suggested at http://kb.parallels.com/113879 to activate your copy of Windows, if you are using boot camp based Windows virtual machine please refer to http://kb.parallels.com/9703 let us know if the issue persist.