Most of you will already know that Windows 10 is already the most widely used desktop operating system in the world. Although later than initially expected by Microsoft, it finally managed to surpass Windows 7 in terms of market penetration, a difference that is gradually increasing.
This is something that Microsoft itself has put a lot of emphasis on in recent years. But of course, because the old version of Windows is no longer supported, finally several of those reluctant to migrate to the most recent version have been forced to do so. Among the reasons why many do not want to migrate, issues related to privacy of Windows 10, UWP apps , performance, problems with updates, etc. are raised.
And of course, at the moment the new version of the operating system is no longer free, so the corresponding financial outlay must also be added. To say that in the beginning and to use Windows 10 in a legal way, in addition to installing it, it is necessary to activate it with its corresponding license. This is provided to us by the vendor or vendor who provides the software to us after paying for it. In this way and once this is done, we will be able to use the computer normally and benefit from all the advantages of Windows 10 .
Windows 10 needs a key to work, although it may fail
With advantages we mean that we can now update the operating system itself together with all its elements without problems. Also in the beginning that key for which we pay should be ours forever. However, and seen what has been seen, it seems that some users are encountering some problems in this regard.
Specifically, we mean that the operating system itself shows us a message indicating that the Windows license is going to expire soon. The problem comes when in the Windows 10 Settings it appears that the system is correctly activated. Of course, the translation of all this is that the legitimate key of the system that we paid for at the time, is going to expire, which should not be the case. That is why below we are going to show you how to try to solve this in the best way.
First of all and to know first-hand if our Windows system is really activated, this is how we do it. We go to the Windows 10 Settings application through the Win + I key combination. After that we go to the Update and security / Activation option, where it already appears if the system is correctly activated or not.
How to fix the problem with Windows 10 key expires
The problem comes if on this screen that we are commenting on, the message appears that the license will expire soon . It will be then when we will have to follow the steps shown below to try to solve the problem described. The first thing to keep in mind here is that we will need to have the original Windows 10 product key or license.
This is usually written on the product box if we buy it like this, or noted somewhere if we buy it in digital format. With everything and with it and if we do not find it at that time or if we do not have it, it is interesting to know that we can recover it from the system command line. Well, for this we open a command prompt window with administrator permissions.
Fix the key crash with the Wmic command
This is something we achieve by typing the CDM command in the search box to bring up that window. Then we just have to execute the command wmic path SoftwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKey.
Once this order returns the product key to us, we take a screenshot, or we simply write it down so that we can have it later. It will be then when again in the Settings application we try to activate Windows 10 with that key returned by the mentioned command.
Use the Slmgr command to reset the key
In the event that this method still does not work, the next thing we can try to solve the failure is to restore the status of the license as such. To say that to achieve this that we are commenting on, we have to reopen the command prompt or CMD window as we showed you before. We run it again with administrator permissions and now we run the slmgr -rearm command.
Thus, after the command is executed correctly, a message will appear asking us to restart the computer. Once it starts again, we can check if the problem has been solved and the dreaded message no longer appears. We refer to the message that the Windows 10 license will expire soon .
But it may be the case that everything remains the same, so we can try to uninstall and reinstall the Windows key. That is something that we can also do from the same command prompt window. But in this case we execute the command slmgr / upk <activation ID> to uninstall the key. If everything goes well once the command is executed, in the Configuration application it will appear that the key is not available.
Reinstall the Windows key from Settings
At that moment we will no longer have to reactivate the key that we recovered before through the Wmic command and we check if everything has been solved. In that case, we should already see the notice that the Windows 10 license will expire soon. Finally, we will tell you that another possible cause of this problem can come from the Tokens.dat file.
We say this because in the event that it is corrupted, it would make Windows 10 activation unable to complete successfully. If we come across this, the best we can do is try to get a copy of this file on some other Windows PC.