Markyboard Posted May 17, 2019 Share Posted May 17, 2019 My mother board fried when I was away traveling. Not sure if weather/lightening had a part in it or just random part failure but I was getting an intermittent USB Over-current message from Win 10. This quickly escalated to not being able to boot up and seeing the same message in the BIOS screen. Did a bunch of isolation test and yup, it was the motherboard; not one of the front or rear panel connectors which I've seen give the same message before when damaged (different pc). I was all set after a couple days of researching to buy a replacement when something made me think to check the warranty. This PC is 15 months old and figured the MB had a 90 day warranty since they're subject to (cough) questionable hands. Turns out ASUS has a 5 year warranty provided there is no physical damage. That's a pretty good no extra cost deal in my book . Turn around from the time I sent it out to receiving the replacement - 9 days. Again, not bad ASUS. Got the new one installed - all appeared to be working. It was maybe a day later I realized there was a very faintly lit message on the screen that said "Need to Activate Win 10". It was late when I noticed it so figured I'd do it the next day or so. The next morning I noticed the computer received some automatic updates, probably security stuff. Turns out that when I got around to activating later that day I discovered Microsoft updated the OS to Win 10 Pro; it was Home edition . Now the legitimate activation code that I have doesn't match up. But worse, after much Googling I found out you have to do a clean install, i.e. wipe the C disk drive . Had I activated the previous day I think I would have been up and running where I was before the MB failure. But the real kicker is the tool Microsoft provides for re-installing the OS doesn't give you the option of which edition to reinstall; if you currently have Win 10 Pro that's all you get to reinstall. Gee, ya think MS knows about this? Fortunately I was able to dig up an ISO file for WIN 10 Home after more research and hours spent. So no Win 10 Pro upgrade for me, but nice try MS . If you need to activate Windows, dont wait. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Husker Posted May 18, 2019 Share Posted May 18, 2019 Did you have Windows activated before you motherboard died? I'm trying to figure out how this may have happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.