z690 Windows 11 activation after flashing the bios

I have a z690 wifi extreme and I recently flashed my bios 13.02. At that time Windows started complaining about not being activated. I called Microsoft and they said that it was blocked, it'd already been activated twice (OEM) which lines up the fact that I had flashed the bios one other time since activating.

I saw a similar complaint for another mfg's z690 board. Is it possible the identifiers microsoft uses for fingerprinting the system in the TPM/PTT is getting wiped out during the flash?


Thanks,
Jonah

Having the same problem after I updated an H670 Steel Legend BIOS from 8.02 to 13.01.

The Windows 11 activation error code is: 0xC004C060

Some values from the terminal command "slmgr.vbs /dlv":

Product Key Channel: OEM:DM

Notification Reason: 0xC004F034

You can use the built-in activation troubleshooter as mentioned in the Reddit post but then they try to link your Windows to your Microsoft account (if it's not already linked or was bought with it).

I canceled that because I don't want that.

I noticed that the BIOS update also updated the Intel Management Engine. Maybe that triggered Windows 11 to think there was a hardware change. There was also some new ASRock Automatic Driver Installer (ADI) software popping up after the update.

If it was just a Windows 11 issue then there would be much more cases.

But Windows 11 seems to be more strict with hardware changes or we would see the same in Windows 10.

Maybe they want to slowly sort out keys that are not bound to a Microsoft account.

For now I'll leave it unactivated as the only drawbacks of it are:

1. The Activate Windows watermark
2. Activation message on Windows Settings
3. No Personalization settings
4. Frequent notification to activate Windows