I reinstalled Windows (or reset my PC) and my software is asking me to activate again

Quick answer

This is normal in most cases, and your license is not lost. Reinstalling or resetting Windows removes the local license information from the computer and changes how the software recognizes the machine, so the software treats it as a fresh installation and asks you to activate again. In most cases you can simply reactivate.

What to do

Reinstall the software and activate again using your license details (for example, your License ID or the activation information from your purchase confirmation email). If your license still has an activation available, activation will succeed and you are done.
If you are told you are out of activations, the activation used by your previous Windows installation is still counted against your license, even though that installation no longer exists. You can free it by deactivating the old installation from the Customer License Portal: - Log in to the Customer License Portal. - Go to Licenses and Activations and open your license. - Use Manage Installation and remove (deactivate) the old installation. - This returns an activation so you can activate on your reinstalled system.
If you do not see a deactivate option, or have no deactivations left, contact the company you purchased the software from. They can reset or adjust your activations.

Common Questions

Did I lose my license by reinstalling Windows?

No. Your license record lives on the licensing server, not only on your computer. Reinstalling Windows removes the local copy and changes the machine's fingerprint, which is why the software asks to activate again, but the license itself is intact. Reactivate using your license details as described above.

Why does the software think this is a different computer?

The software recognizes a computer by a fingerprint built from its hardware and system information, and it also stores license information locally. A Windows reinstall or reset removes that local information and can change the fingerprint, so the software no longer recognizes the machine as the one it was activated on.

I activated offline / by phone. Can I still deactivate the old installation?

Self-service remote deactivation in the Customer License Portal is available for installations that were activated online. If your original activation was done offline (for example, with a trigger code), remote deactivation may not be available; contact the company you purchased from for help freeing an activation.

For software publishers

If your customers hit this often, you can reduce it. Enabling fuzzy-matching and "Allow Reactivations on Same Computer" lets a machine that has not truly changed reactivate without consuming an activation, and enabling self-service deactivation lets customers recover their own activations. See Why are my customers repeatedly prompted to reactivate, and how can I reduce it?.