Linking Windows license with MS account - What does it do?

Clintlgm said:

... I had to use Phone in Activation at the end of the activation

Is Phone In Activation still available? The only references I see now seem to be for enterprise accounts only.

Poke, did you have any success?

2times2 said:

Poke, did you have any success?

Oops. A problem with having two threads for the same problem: I forget to update both of them.

Yes, I finally had success ... about 9 hours ago. Most of the trials, tribulations, and success are documented here. I started asking questions about obtaining a new license and Superfly gave me some suggestions for things to try first.

The bottom line: I had to do a "Change product key" to my old Win7 key that was in effect when I did the free upgrade from Win7 to Win10. Then the Troubleshooter successfully activated my license.

This is purely speculation, but I think the problem was that my PC started life with an OEM version of Win7 Home that I manually upgraded to Win7 Pro. 8 years later that got upgraded to Win10 Pro.

The Troubleshooter displayed a "last used" product id and said the associated product key could not be used for activation. I had not seen before; it was not the one used before I or after my motherboard upgrade. When Superfly suggested I use a Win7 product key I decided I'd better try the upgrade key - the Win7 upgrade key was the closest thing I had to a Win7 Pro key. It worked!

I'm guessing the unrecognizable product id was associated with my original Win7 Home product key.

Anyway, all is well now. I've running an activation Windows.

cereberus said:

It seems that there is no way to tell if the digital licence stemmed from an original oem or retail key.

The above agrees with the following:
Activation of an OEM version after changing the mainboard. - Windows 10 Forums