How-To Geek
How to Use Your Free Windows 10 License After Changing Your PC’s Hardware
The free Windows 10 license you receive is tied to your PC’s hardware. You’re still allowed to use Windows 10 on that same PC even after changing its hardware. Activating that license is easier than ever in Windows 10’s Anniversary Update.
How to Associate Your Windows 10 License with a Microsoft Account
In Windows 10’s Anniversary Update, it’s now possible to associate your free Windows 10 license with your Microsoft account so you can more easily reactivate your PC after hardware changes in the future. This happens automatically when you sign into your PC with a Microsoft account.
If you haven’t yet signed in with a Microsoft account, head to Settings > System & Security > Activation and you’ll be prompted to add a Microsoft account to make reactivation easier.
Once you’ve added a Microsoft account, you’ll see the “Windows 10 is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account” message here.
How to Activate Your Windows 10 License After a Hardware Change
When reinstalling Windows 10 after a hardware change–especially a motherboard change–be sure to skip the “enter your product key” prompts while installing it.
Microsoft has never actually wanted to explain exactly how the hardware-based Windows activation process works. Just replacing your hard drive or upgrading your graphics card shouldn’t cause a problem. If you’ve just changed a few peripherals, Windows 10 may just automatically activate itself after you clean-install it. But, if you’ve changed the motherboard or just a lot of other components, Windows 10 may see your computer as a new PC and may not automatically activate itself.
Head to Settings > Update & Security > Activation and you’ll see a “Troubleshoot” option if activation failed. Click that option and sign in with the Microsoft account you associated your license with. You’ll be able to tell Windows that you “changed hardware on this device recently” and select your PC from a list of devices associated with your Microsoft account. Microsoft’s documentation now explains exactly how this works.
Why You Can’t Just Use a Simple Product Key
The free Windows 10 license works very differently from previous Windows licensing systems. These all required a product key. Even modern Windows 8 and 8.1 PCs–and new PCs that come with Windows 10–have a Windows product key embedded in their UEFI firmware. If you buy a new copy of Windows 10–for example, to install it on a PC you’re building yourself–you’ll also have a product key.
In this case, the product key would always serve to activate Windows. But Microsoft hasn’t been handing out Windows 10 product keys to upgraders. There’s no way to find your Windows 10 product key if you’ve upgraded for free–you just don’t have one.
The free Windows 10 license Microsoft is providing to upgraders works differently. Microsoft won’t issue you a Windows 10 product key. Instead, when you perform an upgrade from within Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or Windows 8.1, the upgrade process registers a unique ID associated with your PC’s hardware on Microsoft’s Windows activation servers.
In the future, whenever you install Windows 10 on that same PC, it will automatically report to Microsoft’s activation servers. Microsoft will confirm that the PC with that specific hardware configuration is allowed to use Windows 10, and it’ll automatically be activated.
This isn’t actually made clear in the installation process itself. To clean-install Windows 10 on a machine activated in this way, you have to continually skip all the product key prompts while installing it.
This automatic process only works if your PC has the same hardware it had when you upgraded to Windows 10.
You Can’t Move a Free Windows 10 License to Another PC
Bear in mind that this will only work on the same PC. This does create some an inconvenient situation for people who bought a full retail license–not an OEM license–of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1. Most people don’t do this, though–even people building their own PCs usually seem to buy OEM copies of Windows.
Those retail licenses are portable between different PCs, so you can take them with you from PC to PC. You might have purchased a Windows 7 license and built your own PC. Build a new PC a few years later and you can take that Windows 7 license with you as long as you remove it from the first machine. Rinse and repeat over and over–as long as you’d like to continue using Windows 7.
However, that free Windows 10 license you get as part of the upgrade process is tied to an individual PC. Even if you upgraded from a retail copy of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1, you won’t be given a retail copy of Windows 10. You just can’t move that free Windows 10 license to another PC. Now that the free Windows 10 upgrade offer is over, you’ll have to buy a new copy of Windows 10 if you want to move it to an entirely different PC.
This may feel a bit inconvenient. But, on the other hand, that Windows 10 license was just a free bonus in the first place. Retail licenses of Windows 10 you purchase can be moved between PCs in the same way.
In the past, Microsoft told people to contact its support staff. Gabriel Aul, Vice President of Engineering for the Windows & Devices group at Microsoft, tweeted that you could contact support from within Windows 10, explain the situation, and they’ll activate Windows 10 for you. This is no longer the officially encouraged way to reactivate Windows 10 after a hardware change now that the automatic troubleshooter is here.
In "MICROSOFT SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS" from promotional Windows 10 say if you acquired the software as stand-alone software (and also if you upgraded from software you acquired as stand-alone software), you may transfer the software to another device that belongs to you. You can read it when installs Windows 10, in your system drive and here http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Useterms/Retail/Windows/10/UseTerms_Retail_Windows_10_English.htm.
One can pull up the new Upgraded, Generated Windows 10 License PID using:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html from Bottom of Page.
Each New PID will be different according to the Specific Migrated Machine Hardware.
How you deal with these new PIDs is between you and MS.
" There’s no way to find your Windows 10 product key if you’ve upgraded for free — you just don’t have one"
I beg to differ, one can get their product ID and product key for Windows 10 by simply running the NirSoft tool produkey.
It's not that Microsoft does not give you one, they are not letting you know about it, it's there you just have to look.
@Edward_Gudz is CORRECT !!!!
I checked the product key in my desktop and laptop with the Nirsoft Produkey application and to my surprise both have the same product key. Keep in mind that both were upgraded to Windows 10 from two legitimate Windows 8.1 Pro retail installs.
If your product key ends with "3V66T", it is a same generic product key shared by everyone in promotional upgrade.
That would mean everyone in the world region would have the SAME PID.
MS must have changed the way they calculate the PID.
Same old company; just new "tricks and traps" as we use to say back in my day. LOL LOL
Yup, I have a -3V66T. So how does this square with the notion that once one has upgraded then one can do a clean install and "activation" is automatic because it is based upon hardware fingerprint detected? Either this key is a dummy where the hardware fingerprint takes precedence or maybe it is really just the same as it was before but MS is just trying to keep the generic key under wraps.
I recall the first time I needed to move an MS Office from an old laptop to a new laptop. The customer did not have their key. The MS site essentially said "sorry for your loss, but we'll sell you a new one!" I then got the key from a tool like Produkey and it activated fine. This sounds almost the same, except if we have issues (ie, we don't know our key) they send us to a different tech support rather than the automated dial-in which assumes we have a key.
I've already had one customer in tears when she tried to update her PC to Win10 and it insisted upon using an MS account which then took over her login/password (ie, customer didn't know it would do this). Another customer was annoyed when Win10 popped up and said "hey, look at all the new stuff I added!" She didn't want it adding new stuff, unless she added it. Ugh, free is sounding less appealing all the time.
I agree !!!!!!
MS couldn't pull this stunt off unless it was FREE. LOL LOL
MS probably got a trustworthy poll rating lower than congress; may be 1 or 2 Percent. LOL LOL ................
Chis, love your articles and thought processes...you are a true nerd/geek at heart, just like me and most everyone else here...;)
But...there's no difference between "changing out a motherboard" and "moving to a new PC," as far as Microsoft is concerned. You'd follow the same procedure if you wanted to "move your license" as you would follow to "change your motherboard"...contact Microsoft to get your license details straightened out. As a point of fact, there's no way Microsoft can discern the difference between changing a motherboard & moving your license to another machine...if you have a retail license that is...
C:\Windows\System32>slmgr /dlv
Run the above command from a CLI prompt and you'll get feedback from Windows 10 which will tell you if you have a retail license or an OEM license
C:\Windows\System32>slmgr /xpr
Run this command to find out if you are permanently licensed
I am now running Win10 build 10525 via the Insider program and am using a retail license with an expiration date of 7/16/2016, but my license with Microsoft is permanent (not at all a contradiction--since by 7/16/2016 I imagine Microsoft will have released several more builds.)
Basically, with an OEM license, you change out the motherboard you lose your OEM license & must purchase a new one. But a retail license will survive even a motherboard swap/move to a newer machine, etc. If this was not true then Microsoft would have no need to differentiate between the two--retail,OEM--& explains why retail costs more than OEM, etc. This is really not a difficult concept to grasp...;)
I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure the ones that is displayed by third party tools is not the actual one. I used one of those tools to get the key for one of my machines so that I could use it to clean re-install. It didn't work so I searched through the closet and found my old box. The key was different! (Not that the real one worked either.![smiley]( ":smiley:")
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Yea, gosh...customer losing the key for Office they were told a thousand times not to lose has to be Microsoft's fault...and you should have explained to your customer how easy it is to install Win10 without a Microsoft account...but, gee, that's Microsoft's fault, too...I guess. And I guess it's also Microsoft's fault--not yours, of course--that they didn't notify your customer and explain to her how WU works in Win10, or that "all this stuff" might actually have some value. But I guess you think Microsoft is supposed to pander to all of your customers in such a way?
Query: Where does Microsoft's role in helping your customers end, and where does yours begin? Just some FFT (food for thought.)
The commands I list above are standard Win10 prompts--no 3rd-party software...
Yes, in this step, promotional installs are identified by hardware fingerprint. I not tested it yet, but I read on some articles that if you need to make a clean install on the same computer, the product key should be omitted.
Product ID and Product Key are different things. Perhaps only the product key is the same and the PID is different based on fingerprint hardware, as you said, perhaps because they have changed the way of calculating it.
I made the move from AMD to Intel a few days ago on W10 and here's what I found: If you reinstall W10 it won't activate correctly but if you keep the current install, W10 seems to stay activated.Basically I just booted into the old installation first and everything was fine. Then I ran the new install from an iso on my storage drive, opted to keep nothing, and when it was finished it wouldn't activate, said the product key was not valid.So I just loaded the backup and all is good.![smile]( ":smile:")
I might be 'living on borrowed time', but maybe MS will eventually get something sorted to make it easier to switch. I remember sometime in the past you could just disassociate from the previous install when they detected a second machine using the os..
Tried V 1.80 on Win 10 x64 Pro and got diff key than from V 1.75 used back at end of July when used forced early method to upgrade from Win 8.1 x64 Pro. V 1.75 did not give key that ended in the mentioned 3V66T but V 1.80 does.I did have some strange crash after upgrade was running for day or two & updates came down. Windows threw me into some loop and I was back at HI opening window and had to redo Themes and such. I looked in CP/System and it said Not Activated. Couple reboots and finally got ok message.btw Produkey also will show Office Pro 2013 key if in there.
I have 3 machines that upgraded from Win8.1 to 10. One ran the upgrade and is fine. One I was stupid enough to try to clean install. It still hasn't activated. The third upgraded fine, but then the hard drive went out (good timing, right) and after reinstalling on the new hard drive it also won't activate.
I've called MS about this a week or so ago and they said they are still having issues with the activation server so I should just wait a couple of days. But I'm going to call back tomorrow. The activation nag text and inability to "personalize" anything is annoying.
I tried this with a clean install and it failed. Contacted Blundersoft who tried to put me thru to Tech Support, but I got cut off TWICE. Tried the online chat and got someone who was singularly UNHELPFUL.DON'T UPGRADE TO W10 UNLESS YOU HAVE A GOOD REASON!
Adam I had the same issue. I recently updated an old laptop from Win 7 to Win 10 just as the directions stated and it was flawless. After it was activated I followed the directions to do a clean install on the same machine by burning an ISO disk and letting the install clean the drive. It also we in without a problrm but will not activate. I ask MS about this and they told me to continue doing updates and at some point it will activate the program again. Its been 2 weeks and still nothing.
Here in this thread from a Windows related forum you can read the complain/request a person sent to Microsoft by email regarding Windows 10 free upgrade licence transfer coming from a Retail Windows 8:
http://www.tenforums.com/general-discussion/14021-windows-retail-version-upgrading-win-10-oem.html#post325037
According to his latest posts in the thread he was later contacted by Microsoft Corporate HQ. After some discussion they reached an agreement and was offered a second standalone Windows 10 licence+key with permanent full transfer rights (check his various posts in the thread):
http://www.tenforums.com/general-discussion/14021-windows-retail-version-upgrading-win-10-oem-6.html#post332784
He also mentions that is possible that the wording within the EULA will soon be changed.
I just came up against this tonight. Was fixing my parents' computer, which had a defective motherboard. Swapped the hardware, used the old hard drive and did a re-install. Noticed that a message saying that Windows was not activated was displayed on the lower right of the screen. Authorization said that my product key was invalid.
Called Microsoft and got a rather rude gentleman who told me that the only way to get Windows 10 back was to start over, re-install Windows 8 and then wait for the computer to prompt that I can redownload Windows 10. He said that they would not allow any sort of activations over the phone for hardware changes, regardless of the circumstances. I asked what happens after the year is up and he said that you need to go buy a retail copy at full price.
Suffice to say, I'm now hesitant to load Windows 10 on any more of my devices.
Why didn't you just load in 8.1, let it update without being too careful, download 10 and then force an upgrade.
That takes a little bit of time but not that much if the connection is decent.
Since Microsoft sells software, rents software, and hopes to tie whatever softeare/service they give zaway free or cheaply to selling or renting something else, they have always resisted the idea that even paying customers should be able to replicate for feee whatever thgey got from Microsoft.
Typically there is either some way to disable/deactivate the original, or for them to determine that that apparently was not done, or for one to convince them in conversation, audio or text or email, that it was one
How sticky they will be with Windows 0 I cannot say, but the actual practice has varied with different products at different times over the years.
I've been dealing with this since their product line consisted of tools like BASIC and small programs built by or run with such tools.
I just had to replace my Motherboard in my PC, and got stung by Windows 10 activation. This post convinced me to try using the support app, and sure enough, the tech confirmed my previous windows 8 product key was valid and with the information in my Microsoft account was able to verify my story. He got me activated there and then.
It sounds like the person you talked was not properly informed on the activation policy for Windows 10 upgrades.Maybe a different person would know the right thing to do and handle it correctly.
Been fighting with it a couple more days, but there's a glimmer of hope. I talked to someone in activation tonight. They were not able to get me a code tonight but said they would call me back tomorrow because they were having system issues. We'll see. Activation is definitely more accommodating than technical support (who they transferred me to last time), so try to avoid tech support if at all possible.
I just replaced a mainboard with an unused virgin NOS exact part number OEM replacement mainboard in the PC this new Haswell Core i5 PC replaced here and Windows 10 would not re activate my win 7 to win 10 upgrade license on a Dban cleaned > NTFS formatted HDD 14393 AU clean install .
I opened up the activation troubleshooter and no go then opened up a chat session with MS and they asked for my same as above win 7 x64 OEM prod key and checked and said it was still valid after I explained the situation .
They had me roll in win 7 x64 from media and in place upgrade to win 10 from media as I did before and they gave me an activation link that I did not have to use ,it activated automatically.
I subsequently DOS formatted the HDD from a win 7 startup repair disk and clean installed windows 10 and it activated again normally
Somebody's going to get a cherry used PC with a newer 1TB HDD ,Ram and CPU upgrades and an NOS (new old stock ) mainboard and squeaky clean activated windows 10 .
. The MS person told me the digital licence is tied to the HDD and moreover the mainboard ,the HDD was not replaced at that time but it was deep cleaned with Dban I found here at HTG ..
Dban must be potent stuff it took ~12 -14 hrs to scrub a 1TB HDD and I never,ever saw windows 10 roll in so fast the first time on metal as that did after a Dban scrub with a simple one step NTFS format /clean (custom ) install![:slight_smile:]( ":slight_smile:")
I Just had to do all that (re install windows 7 and upgrade to windows *again ) with a new mainboard on my old PC this one replaced and it activated windows 10 *again normally . per thier instructions on an MS chat session. from the activation troubleshooter after I provided them my original win 7 prod. key they said was still valid despite using that for an upgrade license .
OTOH there was no upgrade prompt or wait for me . I just told MS at the time I had 14393 AU media and they said that would be fine for an upgrade install which I figured anyway so presumably one could use media or the MCT EZ upgrade install anyway and not wait for a WU prompt .
AFAIK they cant or wont activate significant new HDWE over the phone on an OEM or upgrade licence like they used to ,at least that's what they told me and moreover the HDWE entitlement was mostly tied to the mainboard. .
Note : CPU ,RAM and HDD upgrades prior to the mainboard did not affect the activations here YMMV. .![:slight_smile:]( ":slight_smile:")
yeah - what was i thinking upgrading from my retail Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10 Pro?
similarly, what was I thinking upgrading from X58/i7 970 to Z170/i7-6700k?
"cannot communicate with server"
"Please activate windows:
"go F*** yourself you idiot"
"still trying eh? here's a random error code for you to google"
"mwahahahhahahhahahahahah take that!"