Because I bought a used Lenovo ThinkCentre M91p for $70 from a refurbisher with around 10,000 positive reviews on eBay. It has a Core i5-2400 CPU and 8 GB RAM and will be good enough for me. It has a hard disk installed but no OS on it. I was probably a little bit naive but when I bought it I thought it would be no problem to transfer my Windows 10 Pro license to it.
Well....here's another little trick. If that computer ever had Windows 10 on it before, it probably has a digital license for Windows 10 for it stored on Microsoft Activation servers. So this is what I would do. Clean install Windows 10 Home on it, skip entering the product key when asked. See if that activates when connected to the internet. If that does not activate then trigger the upgrade to Windows 10 Pro by entering the generic Windows 10 product key ending in -3V66T. Then see if that activates.
If that doesn't activate then change the product key to your retail Windows 10 Pro Product Key. The Windows 10 digital licenses stored on Microsoft Activation servers are by computer - no by user.
The computer came and I installed right away Windows 10 Pro, as suggested without putting in any key at first.
It did not activate automatically, and neither the generic key ("invalid") nor my Windows 10 Pro key ("installed on another computer") worked - but my original Windows 8 Pro key did. Really great. Thanks again.
It's also good to know that the Windows version on the old computer is tied to that computer which means that I can (and have to) give it away with this activated Windows 10 Pro version.
Thanks for all your help! I certainly learned something here.
Greetings - desertman
Glad you got it sorted :) but if the motherboard is bad in the old PC, why would you give it away and forfit your now working and activated PC ?
Why would I risk forfeiting the activation on my new PC if I give away the old PC?
I activated Windows 10 on the new PC with my original Windows 8 key, and that was not the key that I used on the old PC. However, if you think that I should better trash the old PC to avoid any risk I would be happy to hear more details.
"It's also good to know that the Windows version on the old computer is tied to that computer which means that I can (and have to) give it away with this activated Windows 10 Pro version."
Not sure what you meant by this comment then.
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