Windows 8.1 Activation problem + printing problems

[cootielander]

Hi, I hope I am posting this in the right place. I have had an ongoing issue with my HP Pavilion g6 and activating Windows 8.1. I bought it like 4 years ago and it came with Windows 8 I believe.

Everything worked perfectly fine until one day I accidentally dropped a ball on my laptop, right on the touchpad, while it was on and running, and it started having problems so I took it to a local computer repair shop. They told me I needed a whole new hard drive since it was all scratched, so I lost all my files and they had to reinstall everything, including the OS. They installed Windows 8.1 on it, and it all cost between $200 and $300 for everything.

A couple months after I got it back, it started saying I needed to activate Windows, and that my product key didn't work. I do not have the product key for it, and I don't know if maybe the repair shop scammed me somehow, or if there is anything I can do to activate my Windows 8.1 other than buying a new product key.

I understand that I should have gone to the repair shop to try to fix this but this was around 2 years ago, and I lost my receipt and any documentation of what they did. It works pretty much fine otherwise (which is why I didn't feel the need to get it fixed). I haven't had many problems but today I bought a new printer and installed it but it was having some trouble connecting, and now it only scans but can't print. I cannot start my Print Spooler service (error 0x800706b9) but that is another issue entirely, except I was thinking that maybe it is related to the fact that I cannot activate my Windows. Hence why I am reaching out today. Any help is much appreciated and I will answer any questions I can. I apologize if any of this is confusing or makes no sense.

 

[Pault58]

Your computer most likely came with an HP OEM copy pre-installed when you purchased it. This is different than the OEM copy I can just go buy from somewhere like Newegg or Amazon. The code code you have is most likely just for the HP OEM version, and will not work with any other version of Windows.

The way I see it, you have 2 options here.

1. Go back to the outfit the fixed your computer and see if they have a valid Key for the Windows version they instaled.

2. Contact HP to see if they have a re-installation CD/DVD for your computer model, that will re-install everything as it was when purchased. Normaly this is located on a special partition on the original hard drive (yours was probably ruined along with the drive). If your computer has no cd/dvd drive, this method would require access to a USB cd/dvd drive that could be temporarily plugged in to re-install the system from the cd/dvd.

Hope this was helpful. Good Luck!