According to reports, the monthly rollup Windows 7 KB4480970 and security-only update KB4480960 flags some PCs as ‘Not genuine’. Some users after installing the update are being met with a deactivated machine as Microsoft’s new patch causes KMS Activation issues where you will see “Not Genuine”, 0xc004f200 error.
Nothing is wrong with your Windows license as the latest cumulative update is at fault which is screwing up things. Microsoft is working on a solution and everything should be back to normal soon.
Microsoft Key Management Services (KMS) which is designed automatically activate copies of Windows and Office suite is having issues on Windows 7.
In a support document, Microsoft says that some users could experience the KMS Activation error, ‘Not Genuine’, 0xc004f200 on some Windows 7 machines. Microsoft is aware of this unfortunate bug and the company is investigating the reports. “We will provide an update when available,” Microsoft explains in support document of both KB4480960 and KB4480970.
A Reddit thread, however, reports that the activation outage has something to do with KB971033 which was released back in April 2018 to help users confirm that their copy of Windows 7 is genuine. It could be possible that KB971033 is conflicting with January 2019 patches or it’s a server-side problem.
“Not Genuine”, 0xc004f200 activation error on Windows 7
Windows 7 KB971033 was released a while ago and it could be possible that Microsoft has messed up something on server-side, as a sysadmin speculates.
“From going through logs it appears Microsoft changed how their servers respond to a KMS key being sent to them. Before January 8th they responded with a 0x00000000. On January 8th they started responding with an error saying the key is blacklisted which puts windows into activation state 5 (notification period),” they noted in a post on Reddit.
A sysadmin reports that KB971033 should never have been installed in a KMS environment. While performing tests, the Windows 7 virtual desktops wrongly reported that the operating system is not genuine.
Another Reddit thread highlights KMS Activation Windows 7 error and there are many customers experiencing this problem.
Microsoft is working on a workaround and everything should be copacetic in a couple of days.
On a related note, Microsoft has acknowledged multiple issues in January 2019 updates for Windows 7. The operating system is also experiencing issues with the SMBv2 networks after installing the monthly rollup or security-only update.