Windows 10 Digital License Transfer

I have been reading a few of the older threads but thought it might be better to open a new thread.
My desktop was running retail Windows 7 Pro and upgraded to Windows 10. It received a new key and the 7 key was no longer valid. Last night I did a clean Windows 10 install on a Laptop and used a retail Windows 8 pro key.
I noticed that both machines are activated with a digital license and have the same generic Windows 10 key.
So all retail upgraded pro machines will show the same generic VK7JG-..... key? How do you transfer to a new machine if you do not have a unique key?

So there is no deactivation for the digital license and no transfer to a new system without linking to a Microsoft account? I would like to deactivate on the older hardware prior to sale.

There is one caveat to what @cereberus posted. If you use a Windows 7 or Windows 8 product key enough times in a certain period of time, it gets blocked from online activation. If it is blocked from online activation, to the best of my knowledge, it cannot be used to activate a new install of Windows 10 because activation of Windows 10 with a Windows 7 or 8 product key relies upon automatic activation over the internet.

In the case of a blocked Windows 7 or Windows 8 product key, I have had to first install Windows 7 or 8 on the new computer, use phone activation to activate the Windows 7 or Windows 8, then upgrade to Windows 10 to establish the digital license for Windows 10.

Now, it's been a long time since I have been in that situation, and newer versions of Windows 10 may allow for phone activation with a blocked Windows 7 or 8 product key, I don't know.

Hi folks
Just adding a remark to what has been said here.

If you have Windows installed as a Virtual Machine on VMWare and you copy it to a new machine - at first boot on the new computer you'll get a prompt for the VM "I coped it" and "I Moved it".

Choose the "I Moved it" option and activation remains. If you use the "I copied it" option you'll be prompted again to re-activate windows which might fail.

Just a note here for people wanting to test Windows VM's on a variety of computers -- note though for the EULA you can only run 1 of these VM's at a time as it's 1 license.

Cheers
jimbo

I am going to sell or donate the old laptop so I do not want to leave a retail copy of 10 on it.

What should be done to deactivate and prepare it for use on another machine at a later time?

When reinstalling on new hardware, should I use the 8 key that it was originally activated with or is it now dead?

Elgato54 said:

I am going to sell or donate the old laptop so I do not want to leave a retail copy of 10 on it.

What should be done to deactivate and prepare it for use on another machine at a later time?

There is nothing that you can do to deactivate it. All you can do to comply with the EULA is remove Windows from the old computer and put something like Linux on in its place.

Elgato54 said:

When reinstalling on new hardware, should I use the 8 key that it was originally activated with or is it now dead?

See posts #4 and #5 above.