Generic Product Keys to Install Windows 10 Editions  

Does anyone know where Microsoft documents the generic retail installation keys? I know that I can simply obtain them here from this tutorial, but as a part of my own personal documentation on this topic I would like to note where Microsoft themselves actually documents this.

NOTE: I have the Microsoft documentation that lists the KMS keys, I'm specifically looking for the documentation of the generic retail installation keys.

Thanks!

Ahh, that makes sense. Please don't trouble yourself to check on that. I can do that.

Thanks greatly for the help.

Ryan Loader said:

Hello...

I was wondering if somebody here can shed some light on the term " generic key" ?

I recently used a generic key which is as i understand a key provided by MS themselves to use as a means to install an OS version but it never activates the product.. So a tool to try out OS versions and do unattended setups etc.

I used it to upgrade a users home edition windows to PRO so we could then join to domain and use a E3 O365 license to then activate.

I removed the generic key and activated windows after it was eventually an enterprise edition with the E3 O365 license.

My work flagged this as " against MS policies " saying it was illegal what i did.


My question is this not a MS issues Generic key to be used exactly for this type of scenario ?

Have you ever find out the legality of this?. We're in same boat. We've bunch of laptops, most of which came with Windows 10 Home & some with Ubuntu. Since our workloads are mainly Linux we never had to use Pro or Enterprise. But for a specific project requirement, we wanted to implement AppLocker which is only available on Enterprise SKUs. We thought we can purchase Windows 10 Enterprise E3 licenses, clean install Windows 10 Enterprise on the laptops & activate them with the purchased Windows 10 Enterprise E3 licenses. But we got to know about the requirement of an existing Pro license on the devices to be eligible for upgrade.

st7 said:

....for a specific project requirement, we wanted to implement AppLocker which is only available on Enterprise SKUs. We thought we can purchase Windows 10 Enterprise E3 licenses, clean install Windows 10 Enterprise on the laptops & activate them with the purchased Windows 10 Enterprise E3 licenses. But we got to know about the requirement of an existing Pro license on the devices to be eligible for upgrade.

Welcome to Ten Forums.

For your purposes the 90 day trial version of Enterprise should fit the bill and be perfectly legal.

Microsoft said:

This evaluation software is designed for IT professionals interested in trying Windows 10 Enterprise on behalf of their organization.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/eval...-10-enterprise

Bree said:

Welcome to Ten Forums.

For your purposes the 90 day trial version of Enterprise should fit the bill and be perfectly legal.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/eval...-10-enterprise

Thanks for your reply. So, Enterprise Evaluation can be activated with Enterprise 10 E3 / E5 licenses without re-installing or even if the existing device(laptop / desktop) didn't have any 'pro' license attached to it?.