During installation Windows 11/10 as a clean install on your device, you may have encountered an error stating that The product key entered does not match any of the Windows images available for installation. This happens when in fact you haven’t even gotten to the step of entering the product key.
You may get such an error even if you did all the right things before and during your clean install. You may have formatted the drive, downloaded the upgrade wizard, and successfully created a bootable USB.
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The product key entered does not match any of the Windows images available for installation
The installation process begins with booting from the installation media. After restarting and when you are done selecting the language, region and time zone, the system displays a message saying:
The product key entered does not match any of the Windows images available for installation. Enter a different product key.
The system then simply returns to the first screen. This issue prevents the clean install from completing and the user may just have to settle for a simple upgrade.
But, if an upgrade is not what you are looking for, this post will be helpful for you to resolve this issue. The problem can be solved through the installation media. Extract the contents of Windows 10 ISO file, using extraction software like 7-Zip.
Now follow this solution posted on Microsoft Answers. It’s simple and has proven effective more than most times.
Open Notepad and type the following:
[PID] Value=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
Although it may seem obvious, it is worth mentioning that XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX should be replaced with your genuine and unique 25-character product key.
After you finish typing the line above with your product key, the Notepad file should be saved as PID.txt au /sources under the extracted Windows 10 ISO folder. In this way, the OEM key already installed in the BIOS of your device is replaced by the PID file.
After placing the PID.txt file under the sources folder, use ISO creation software like ISO Workshop, to create the ISO file. Once you are done recreating the ISO file, create another bootable installation media with the ISO file you just created.
Now you can start another clean install. This time you will not get any errors and can complete the whole process.
To fix The product key entered does not match any of the Windows images available for installation problem on Windows 11/10, you need to overwrite the existing OEM product key. For this, you can follow the above-mentioned steps. In other words, you need to create a PID.txt file and save it to the /sources folder inside the Windows ISO. For this, you can use Notepad or any other text editing application.
Why is Microsoft not accepting my product key?
There can be countless reasons why Microsoft is not accepting your product key. For example, if the product key does not match the version of Windows, it will not work. If the product key is incorrect, you cannot use it. Like these, there are other reasons why you are unable to activate your copy of Windows with the existing product key.
Hope this guide worked!
