Clone Win10 pro SSD Questions

Hello everyone! I'm new here and so far, have done five successful upgrades from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro. All activated fine. These were fresh installs to new SSDs using the old Win7 Pro keys entered during installation or embedded bios .

My question is for two identical desktops. Both had valid Windows 7 Pro licenses.

The first one works fine, was activated using a cat5 connection. I cloned it and installed it in a second machine with a wireless connection.

I changed the second machine's name and user name and entered a new product key...or so I thought. It's been working great for almost a month. Several updates have been installed.

HOWEVER, ProduKey reveals that the product key I thought I successfully inserted didn't "take". The key from the first desktop is there, so I now both desktops have identical product keys.

So, can anyone give me some guidance on the best option to choose?

1) A fresh installation to another SSD, activate it, and take another 4 hours of time installing all my programs?

2) Same as # 1, but after activation is done, attempt to change the product key AGAIN in the cloned disk? My logic here is that once the second key is activated, it will remain valid in case I choose option #3.

3) Just attempt to change the product key in the clone again? (I'm afraid of doing so in case this would result in invalidating my second machine's key) What did I screw up the first time-maybe not using a utility to wipe out the SID?

I did search for answers but couldn't find anything specific for this scenario.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long post!!

winh8r said:

...five successful upgrades from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro.

...ProduKey reveals that the product key I thought I successfully inserted didn't "take". The key from the first desktop is there, so I now both desktops have identical product keys..

If that key is VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T then there is nothing to worry about. This is the generic W10 Pro key, usually installed after a successful upgrade from W7/8/8.1 Pro to W10 Pro. My Pro machines have that key too.

The generic key does not activate W10, that is done by a digital license stored on the Microsoft activation servers and is linked to your PC's unique Hardware ID. Any W10 Pro machine with the generic key will activate if it has a digital license on the activation servers.

It is that key!

I double checked records (since machines are 800 miles from each other) and found that the original Win 7 keys are not that number.

That saved me a lot of "work".

You made my day, thanks!

winh8r said:

That saved me a lot of "work".
You made my day, thanks!

You're welcome.

Windows 10 activation is different from Windows 7, once a key has been used to gain a digital license on the activation servers it is the hardaware ID of the PC that is used to determine if the machine will be activated. That hardware ID doesn't include the hard drive, so you are free to swap an HDD for an SSD, but swapping the motherboard counts as a substantial change and may require reactivation.

In Pro you can use the Activation Troubleshooter after a substantial hardware change. This requires your digital license to have been linked to your Microsoft account before the change.

Use Activation Troubleshooter in Windows 10
Link Microsoft Account to Windows 10 Digital License

More on W10 activation: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ws-10-activate

I never set up a Microsoft account on any of my windows activations. Only local!