Refurbishing a dead gaming rig turned into a fight over Windows activation

Client brought in a custom build that wouldn't post, turned out the motherboard had a bent pin in the CPU socket. I reseated it and got it running, but then Windows refused to activate because the license was tied to the old board. The client wanted me to bypass it, I said I can't do that, they argued for 20 minutes about how they owned the license. I ended up telling them to call Microsoft support and it took them 40 minutes on the phone, but they got it sorted. My question is, how do you handle activation headaches when hardware swaps are the root cause? Do you always push the client to call, or have you found a quicker way through the system?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlie_stone729d ago

Yeah, I just tell em to call MS and say they swapped the board, usually takes one call and they fix it.

emma_young7d ago

Did you see that post in the Microsoft support forums about this? Someone there said the same thing, that reps usually skip the whole troubleshooting thing if you just say you already swapped the board. I tried it with my Series X last month and they sent me a shipping label in like ten minutes. Still took a week to get it back, but at least I didn't have to argue with anyone.