Windows 10 Subscription Activation after shift to NCE subscription

[JaniH]

Hi everyone! My customer contacted me after their Windows 10 Enterprises (activated via M365 E3 subscription) started downgrading to Pro this week, magically 90 days after their subscription was shifted to the new commerce experience.

I googled and even binged this and found this Windows 10 Enterprise Subscription is not valid | NCE (call4cloud.nl) matching our issue 100%

I tried my luck with MS support by opening a ticket via partner center. This ticket was then assigned to some Exchange online team who now tries to internally discuss what to do when I told we are not using paid Windows support for this (who would point their finger to the subscription/M365 licenses). For the record, nothing is changed in the configuration of these Windows 10 endpoints: Hybrid Azure AD joined, Synced users assigned the E3 licences via group based licensing.

The Windows 10 pro endpoints are deployed by ConfigMgr OSD and these are then updated to Enterprise once the licensed user signs in.

Just wanted to know if others are experiencing the same issues?
So far I've found these:
Windows 10 Enterprise Subscription is not valid | NCE (call4cloud.nl)

Twitter Klaus Østergren

Microsoft 365: Activation issues with Windows Pro Enterprise (May 31, 2022) | Born's Tech and Windows World (borncity.com)

[JaniH · Accepted solution]

I got the ticket escalated and MS found that the issue is at backend at tenant level. They will do their magic now, let's see how this plays out.

[jimtampa]

That's good news.  Please let us know the outcome.  

[JaniH]

After Microsoft's backend fix (which I don't know anything about) the Endpoints succesfully re-activated as Enterprise. Case closed.

[jimtampa]

Thanks for sharing!

[JaniH]

Yep, this one was directly from one of the links I posted, wasn't it? That really is a band aid which will make things even worse. Now, the clients would be frantically looking for a KMS host only to never find one. And some 30 days later, the honeymoon aka the grace period would be over and the machines would be completely unlicensed.

[jimtampa]

I also noticed this when researching the problem.  Perhaps asking them to sync your licenses will resolve your issue?  

Please Note: This licensing issue is due to the new commerce experience tool. It affects all E3/E5 licenses purchased before 29th April 2022. To solve this issue, MS needs to manually sync the licenses to the tenants

I guess you need to reach out to Microsoft Support and ask them to start syncing the licenses!

[JaniH]

Yes, I read that same sentence in the blog I linked in my post. However, asking Microsoft "to sync the licenses" is no easy task - I don't even know what that actually means. I tried opening a support ticket via partner center and I got a call from some Exchange Online team and they coudn't do more than tell me to get paid support from the Windows team. I let them hear my thoughts on that one (had to apologize later). 

[jimtampa]

I found this temporary band-aid until Microsoft fixes the problem.  

For now, there is not yet an official validated fix provided by Microsoft but if you are experiencing this issue from HAADJ devices and you want to temporarily fix it you could run this command.

cscript.exe C:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs -ipk NPPR9-FWDCX-D2C8J-H872K-2YT43

It will put in a generic KMS enterprise key for the time being… after entering it.. the HAADJ device will become enterprise again. I guess something is better than nothing! It’s like choosing between 2 evils?