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.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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