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Any harm in using an old Windows license?

Perrin
By Perrin
in Windows
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Got rid of some old PCs from work and since I only have the "free" version of windows on my home computer I thought I could use the license key from an old PC to officially license my copy of Windows. Is there any harm in doing this? i.e. will it mess up my current windows or have the chance to corrupt files or anything like that?

 

Thanks for any help

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It should be just fine. Windows only modifies stuff if you use a product key that is a higher edition to what you currently have. For example, using a Windows 10 Pro key to activate Windows 10 Home will require Windows to reboot to enable the extra features the Pro edition has.

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2 minutes ago, AKS_Adrian said:

It should be just fine. Windows only modifies stuff if you use a product key that is a higher edition to what you currently have. For example, using a Windows 10 Pro key to activate Windows 10 Home will require Windows to reboot to enable the extra features the Pro edition has.

I had Windows yell at me and refuse the key the one time I tried that... YMMV, I guess...

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There's no harm using old Windows key, but you might need to call Microsoft to activate your Windows should the Windows failed to activate.

 

If you are talking about Windows XP, then you definitely need to call Microsoft to activate your Windows XP.

 

Windows 10 however is a hit or miss. I experiment with Dell laptop that uses OEM version of Windows Home and trying to upgrade to Windows 10 pro and it couldn't work. Had to reinstall Windows 10 using Windows Installer downloaded from Internet then it can be activated.

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1 minute ago, AbydosOne said:

I had Windows yell at me and refuse the key the one time I tried that... YMMV, I guess...

Windows licenseing is weird.

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13 minutes ago, AKS_Adrian said:

Windows licenseing is weird.

More like customer service in general is weird. If you have consumer copy you should be fine but it is a hit or miss on OEM copy especially if you dont know where it came from like in gray market keys.

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