Activating windows 10 on new hardware

jamonbread22 said:

I took advantage of the free upgrade to Win10 from Win 8.1 many years ago on my aging Core2 system.

Recently my Core2 motherboard failed. The board will no longer post, so I got a new board, ram and cpu.

I was hoping to use my current Win10 instillation in the new hardware, but I don't think it's going to work out. I had a Linux install on another SSD, and I think the grub bootloader is preventing Windows from booting. Probably for the best to do a fresh install anyway.

When I upgraded from Win8 which I purchased digitally, I'm not sure if my activation key was changed for Win10, as I can't boot Win10 on my new hardware to check.

I have a Microsoft account tied to Win10 install, but from what I've read it logs the hardware to the account as well.

I think I've found my Win8.1 activation key, but I'm not 100% sure if it's from a laptop or not.
If it's my original 8.1 key, will it still be valid to activate Win10, or even Win8, or is it invalid after upgrading?

Supposedly, you can just do a clean install of Windows 10, and because the last Win 10 install was connected to a Microsoft account, you can...

Activate Windows 10




As for the Win 8.1 key... they have only so many activations. If you haven't reached that amount, whatever it is, you should be able to do it that way as well.

jamonbread22 said:

If it's my original 8.1 key, will it still be valid to activate Win10, or even Win8, or is it invalid after upgrading?

Hmmm.. yup. (stays valid)

Ghot said:

As for the Win 8.1 key... they have only so many activations. If you haven't reached that amount, whatever it is, you should be able to do it that way as well.

Hmmm.. yup. (MSA does not matter... )

Matthew Wai said:

I used a Win7 key to activate Windows 10 after a motherboard change in 2018.

Uhmm... 2018? Was a good year anyway...

jamonbread22 said:

I'm not yet 100% certain yet if the Win8.1 key I've found is mine that I upgraded to Win10, or one I used for a laptop I setup for my mother many years ago now. She's still using the laptop with Win8.1

It's good to know I can still use my Win8 key though.

I've decided to get a new SSD drive, as the one I'm still using with Win10 on must be over 8 years old now.
I'm hoping to recover some data that's still on there with Windows 10.

Thanks for the replies.

Why is your mum still on 8.1? No worries if she's happy - they get cranky if you change their world, I know. Assume your product key is retail?