On Saturday, October 13, 2018 at 11:41:52 PM UTC+8, Paul wrote:
RayLopez99 wrote:
On Saturday, October 13, 2018 at 11:19:15 PM UTC+8, RayLopez99 wrote:

2) I took the laptop to a PC shop. Several actually. The first couple were, much to my surprise, afraid I was a mystery shopper from Microsoft or the government (even though I am Caucasian in the Philippines) and refused to serve me, unless I agreed to buy a full-blown copy of Windows, which costs something like $200. It was comical. But finally a shop took a chance on me, a


I wish to point out that ironically I actually have a real product key and this is a genuine copy of Windows 10, but they, for their own reasons, refused to hear me. Apparently, one guy said, some shop was closed down a while ago for dealing with pirated software and they irrationally did not want to deal with any foreigners with Windows activation issues, as a precaution. Usually Filipinos will do almost anything for money but not these guys.

RL

But you don't have an activation issue at the moment.

That will only come when changing the key from
Home to Pro and trying to upgrade it that way.
Then the machine will contact Microsoft to complete
the activation step.

Maybe the shop guys will know of the "key method"
for changing from Home to Pro.

Microsoft only sends lawyers to close down PC shops,
after $500K of "theft". You would have to pirate
a couple thousand copies of Windows OS before they
do something. They don't generally go around closing
down shops for just one "activation issue".

Microsoft gets reports from customers, while the customer
uses Microsoft Tech Support to solve activation problems.
If a large number of customers report "I got that bad copy
of Windows 10 from Bobs PC Shop", that's how they
formulate a case to shut down a shop. That's how
they determine a couple thousand bad copies were
installed at Bobs. And then it's off to court Bob goes.
Usually it would be a "seriously bad" shop getting
closed.

Paul

Interesting, thanks. The PC guys told me that the shops that turned me away are not that experienced, they more or less have a few months experience, repeated for years at a time. Their target audience is first time buyers or people who don't know much about PCs, since the owners themselves are not that PC literate. It could be gossip, but it's not unlikely either that the shops didn't want to soil their hands with my problems.

As I said, it was found to be a hardware problem eventually.

RL