What to Do When Your Windows 8.1 Pro Pre-Installed OS Licence Expires for Your Laptop?

Recently I faced with a problem with my laptop. Every now and then when I booted my laptop (it's a couple of years old Toshiba Satellite Pro with Intel Core Duo processor inside) a blue labelled message began to appear which read like this:

"YOUR WINDOWS LICENCE IS SOON TO GET EXPIRED, 

PLEASE ACTIVATE IT !"

I am not a computer expert. I had purchased my laptop with pre-installed operating system. I never knew that the the operating system producer, Microsoft in this case, had placed a limited licensed product inside my laptop, without which my computer is quite useless. To my understanding, a laptop machine with pre-loaded software should mean software too to keep working together with the hardware to the end.

Anyway the message from the OS producer indicated that it is not the case. Some detailed study on the topic revealed the following to me:

The manufacturer of the pre-loaded laptop should have used a unique OS with a unique licence key and should have provided me those too. I remember the retailer giving me some CDs telling them as the backup OS and other software tools.

I never had an opportunity to use those in my past couple of years and now those delicate items are not traceable any more!

Even it those are available, the OS company now says that the license is over. I have to get new license, perhaps by paying some money to Microsoft. But how? I have to use my present computer to do that and what if the whole process fails in between? Whom I would contact for help in case I fail?

The present world of computers for everyone, including home users like me and the working professionals in the various business organizations is quite complex. It is the combined product of the intelligent works of millions of people over decades across the globe!

Every one knows some aspects of computers now, but none could be an expert of everything.

For solving the problems, one may have to look for solutions also from the data that exist in the linked computers of the internet!

And it is an art! If you know it, well and good. If you don't well, start the game from the beginning by say, getting a new computer!

Computer savvy youngster might find solutions for such problems much faster. But that may not be the situation for ordinary old users like me!

Yet I did some data mining and tried out fixing the problem myself. And it worked!

Now let me share that procedure with those of you who might land in to such a problem now or later!

Now the following is the procedure that you can try if you face with the problem mentioned above to fix it, just as I did it successfully:

If you use a smart phone, find this blog page with your smartphone browser and keep it opened for you to refer to the procedure steps. Else you may write down the procedure first lest you forget it once you start trying it on your laptop. Alternatively you may take a picture of the procedure using your smart phone and keep the picture opened for your ready reference.

PROCEDURE

1.START YOUR LAPTOP AND EXIT FROM ALL USUAL APPS THAT YOU USE

2. OPEN 'TASK MANAGER' BY PRESSING CONTROL+ALT+DELETE TOGETHER

3. IN THE TASK MANAGER WINDOW, FIND WINDOWS EXPLORER PROCESS

4. RIGHT CLICK WINDOWS EXPLORER AND FIND AND SELECT 'RESTART'

5. HERE YOU FIND THE PROCESS HAS RESTARTED

6. WAIT FOR A MINUTE AND THEN CLOSE THE TASK MANAGER WINDOW

7. THEN GO TO THE START MENU ICON AT THE BOTTOM LEFT

8. RIGHT CLICK THE START MENU ICON AND SELECT Command Prompt (Admin)

9. CLICK  Yes to get into DOS Window ( uac) prompt in black screen

10. Type the command: slmgr -rearm at the place the curser blinks and press ENTER

( Note that there is a space between slmgr and -rearm ; do not forget to place the minus sign (-) not underscore (_) before rearm)

11. NOW RESTART YOUR COMPUTER / LAPTOP AS USUAL

If your computer is with Windows 8.1 Pro OS using 32 bit configuration, your problem should get fixed by this method.

I am sharing this as I could fix the problem by this method.

But a word of caution. You cannot be fully sure whether it works because of the possibility of several complex factors inherent to computer systems. Try your luck yourself if you dare.

Good luck!