this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
6 points (100.0% liked)

techsupport

2468 readers
11 users here now

The Lemmy community will help you with your tech problems and questions about anything here. Do not be shy, we will try to help you.

If something works or if you find a solution to your problem let us know it will be greatly apreciated.

Rules: instance rules + stay on topic

Partnered communities:

You Should Know

Reddit

Software gore

Recommendations

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
6
Windows 11 product key transfer and fresh reinstall question (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
1 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I have no plans to use W11 I just want to have the copy. I have a second hand laptop with a 1TB nvme drive, two m.2 slots and a spare 256GB nvme. I have what looks to be a fresh install with a local account. Is the product key all that is requited to make the transfer and reinstall work with a new drive?

How does this work if the product key was used before with an actual Microsoft account and then the machine is sold with a wiped system and local account? I haven't used old softy since W8 and not much even then.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Microsoft uses a combination of hardware IDs (specific components on the system with unique serial numbers) and an actual license key to ensure a device is licensed. This is how sometimes you appear to do a fresh reinstall but the drive activates without a key. You can still pull a traditional license key and it can usually be used to activate 2 distinct devices, but the actual licensing terms are pretty ambiguous in that they say you can only do one device but actually allow 2 or more. Sometimes replacing too many components and activating windows again results in the activation check.