What are the chances i keep my windows key after swapping hardware twice?

CB_J_IRacing · March 19, 2020

no problem keeping my windows key after changing mobo, ram, and cpu awhile back, but I heard theres a limited amount of times they'll let you do that before having to pay for a new key. Has anyone had more than one refresh?

thanks

The_russian · March 19, 2020

8 minutes ago, CB_J_IRacing said:

no problem keeping my windows key after changing mobo, ram, and cpu awhile back, but I heard theres a limited amount of times they'll let you do that before having to pay for a new key. Has anyone had more than one refresh?

thanks

In my experience it only works once, but I think that is only for the motherboard I, as far as I am aware you can change the cpu and ram as often as you like. If you are using a Microsoft account, you can link the key to the account and reactivate it for free after replacing a component.

piratemonkey · March 19, 2020

22 minutes ago, CB_J_IRacing said:

no problem keeping my windows key after changing mobo, ram, and cpu awhile back, but I heard theres a limited amount of times they'll let you do that before having to pay for a new key. Has anyone had more than one refresh?

thanks

windows grabs something from your hardware to identify it or something. ltt did an episode a while back on why they dont verify windows

aDoomGuy · March 19, 2020

If I understand correctly it depends on the licence. If licence is retail I think you can move it as many times you want. if it is OEM ..I think you can move it once to a new mobo. (I may be wrong BUT)...

I got a PC 10(?) years ago. It had Windows 7 OEM on it, I upgraded that to Windows 8 for 20-ish USD and later to Windows 10 for free. The PC was a HP and I'm pretty sure the Windows 7 licence was OEM, anyway somewhere along the upgrade path the licence changed from OEM to retail and I could apparently take that licence to another computer and a few months ago to a third computer and it is still activated with retail licence.

So how to find out what licence you have, just open command prompt and type slmgr -dli

A window should pop up and on the second line look for either Retail, OEM or VOLUME. (Volume is for enterprises and such so it is probably not that).

piratemonkey · March 19, 2020

19 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

If I understand correctly it depends on the licence. If licence is retail I think you can move it as many times you want. if it is OEM ..I think you can move it once to a new mobo. (I may be wrong BUT)...

I got a PC 10(?) years ago. It had Windows 7 OEM on it, I upgraded that to Windows 8 for 20-ish USD and later to Windows 10 for free. The PC was a HP and I'm pretty sure the Windows 7 licence was OEM, anyway somewhere along the upgrade path the licence changed from OEM to retail and I could apparently take that licence to another computer and a few months ago to a third computer and it is still activated with retail licence.

So how to find out what licence you have, just open command prompt and type slmgr -dli

A window should pop up and on the second line look for either Retail, OEM or VOLUME. (Volume is for enterprises and such so it is probably not that).

im pretty sure the only difference between the two is that microsoft offers support for retail, and for oem its meant for oems so support would be offered by them. i think that retail comes on a usb, while oem is a dvd. im not sure tho. its tied to the hardware

CB_J_IRacing · March 19, 2020

26 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

If I understand correctly it depends on the licence. If licence is retail I think you can move it as many times you want. if it is OEM ..I think you can move it once to a new mobo. (I may be wrong BUT)...

I got a PC 10(?) years ago. It had Windows 7 OEM on it, I upgraded that to Windows 8 for 20-ish USD and later to Windows 10 for free. The PC was a HP and I'm pretty sure the Windows 7 licence was OEM, anyway somewhere along the upgrade path the licence changed from OEM to retail and I could apparently take that licence to another computer and a few months ago to a third computer and it is still activated with retail licence.

So how to find out what licence you have, just open command prompt and type slmgr -dli

A window should pop up and on the second line look for either Retail, OEM or VOLUME. (Volume is for enterprises and such so it is probably not that).

Its OEM license

CB_J_IRacing · March 19, 2020

1 hour ago, The_russian said:

In my experience it only works once, but I think that is only for the motherboard I, as far as I am aware you can change the cpu and ram as often as you like. If you are using a Microsoft account, you can link the key to the account and reactivate it for free after replacing a component.

I do have a Microsoft account, so that would take care of it? I have one more upgrade I need to do, it's not crucial but it's bugging me that it's not being used

CB_J_IRacing · March 19, 2020

10 minutes ago, piratemonkey said:

im pretty sure the only difference between the two is that microsoft offers support for retail, and for oem its meant for oems so support would be offered by them. i think that retail comes on a usb, while oem is a dvd. im not sure tho. its tied to the hardware

The license is originally from a prebuilt system

piratemonkey · March 19, 2020

2 minutes ago, CB_J_IRacing said:

I do have a Microsoft account, so that would take care of it? I have one more upgrade I need to do, it's not crucial but it's bugging me that it's not being used

just be sure to link the license. you can do that in windows settings.

2 minutes ago, CB_J_IRacing said:

The license is originally from a prebuilt system

i dont believe that would have any effect on upgrading. just be sure to have the activation key. (again, available under the update menu>activation)

CB_J_IRacing · March 19, 2020

18 minutes ago, piratemonkey said:

just be sure to link the license. you can do that in windows settings.

i dont believe that would have any effect on upgrading. just be sure to have the activation key. (again, available under the update menu>activation)

Ok thanks man I'm gonna give it a try in the morning

aDoomGuy · March 19, 2020

9 hours ago, piratemonkey said:

im pretty sure the only difference between the two is that microsoft offers support for retail, and for oem its meant for oems so support would be offered by them. i think that retail comes on a usb, while oem is a dvd. im not sure tho. its tied to the hardware

OEM licenses are tied to the very first computer you install and activate it on

If you want transfer rights and be able to make all sorts of hardware modifications, then the retail full license is recommended

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install/microsoft-os-retail-vs-oem/3b074bf1-58e3-4675-8706-b9206d5a97a1

9 hours ago, CB_J_IRacing said:

Its OEM license

So it seems it is not transferable.

CB_J_IRacing · March 19, 2020

3 hours ago, aDoomGuy said:

OEM licenses are tied to the very first computer you install and activate it on

If you want transfer rights and be able to make all sorts of hardware modifications, then the retail full license is recommended

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install/microsoft-os-retail-vs-oem/3b074bf1-58e3-4675-8706-b9206d5a97a1

So it seems it is not transferable.

well it definitely will, idk what it is tied to, I've upgraded just about everything from this PC except GPU and storage. All I had to do was call the number to get a new key and get rid of the watermark