dodgy coa sticker question

Hello, i have a quite strange dilema. About 2 years ago i bought used dell computer with windows 7 coa sticker on it.
it didn't seem much of a stretch it would be actual oryginal sticker that came with the pc, and it activated with no problems even though i had to guess some smeared letters.
Than about a year ago that pc died due to water condensation because it lived in very bad conditions so i take coa sticker off and left the husk for recycling after removing every part that i could still use, because only motherboard is ded and i don't like to throw away things i can use in less fortunate pc.

Back to the coa sticker though
recently i decided to recover cd key from that sticker so i could try to use it in the future perhaps but it was already smeared before and now about 5 signs were unreadable enough to make me guess what they are, so i launched show key plus and begin brure force atempt to guess and i did figured out a cd key that does show up as valid key while containing all reaable letters from my sticker, the problem is i am not sure if it was me randomly guessing a different version of the system , or is that something even bigger.
i mean what are the odds for me to type in a partial windows 7 pro oem and fill in the blanks to get windows 7 pro volume licencing key instead? while typing in the blanks i took into consideration how partialy smeared letters look like and that certain alphabet signs like o and 0 do not apear in any coa key so i schould be pretty close to what the oryginal key should be and replacing B with 8, M with H and 6 with G shouldn't give me a different version og licence, it in most cases should give me invalid cd key. i have no idea how those thngs are calculated but i am pretty sure there is no chance for 2 cd kets to have last 16 characters the same (and other 4 from first 2 segments) but being in different licence type just because fews random signs are different.

so i have a question
Can an windows 7 oem key randomly transform into volume licencing key if you bind it to your computer and microsoft account, or was it always volume licencing key? Or perhaps show key plus downloaded from microsoft store lied to me somehow?
I did activated windows 10 pro with this key before and it had no issues with that , i also registered that cd key to my windows account with no problem so i could transfer it to a different pc if i needed to, but now it looks it was a volume licencing key all along. Have any of you seen something similar?

kokodin said:

Can an windows 7 oem key randomly transform into volume licencing key if you bind it to your computer and microsoft account, or was it always volume licencing key? Or perhaps show key plus downloaded from microsoft store lied to me somehow?
I did activated windows 10 pro with this key before and it had no issues with that , i also registered that cd key to my windows account with no problem so i could transfer it to a different pc if i needed to, but now it looks it was a volume licencing key all along. Have any of you seen something similar?

Windows 7 COA stickers on OEM PC's are for 'OEM' licences and are not transferable when the PC dies.

Windows 7 COA stickers for retail editions were usually stuck to the DVD jewel case or part of a jewel case insert. These licences are transferable.

Windows 7 COA stickers for refurbished PC's should be stuck to PC's case close to the original COA sticker but in my experience often came stapled to the invoice from the MAR (Microsoft Approved Refurbisher) for the device. These licences are not transferable.

I'm happy to be proved wrong but in many years of bulk imaging hundreds, if not thousands, of OEM devices with Volume Licensed replacements of their original OEM OS installs, I've never once seen any device come with a COA sticker marked Volume Licensing, only 'OA' (or 'MAR' for refurbs). Windows 7 Volume Licencing was only for use within the business/organisation that had a business agreement with Microsoft and not transferable.

I'm aware that there was also a System Builder licence for small manufacturers but I've never seen one (although I believe the included COA sticker showed 'OEM'). If I remember correctly, Microsoft put a stop to the scheme when System Builder DVDs were being sold with parts like optical drive audio cables as a way to circumvent Microsoft's licensing terms at the time. AFAIK System Builder 'OEM' licences were not transferable, even if you transferred the part they were originally purchased with.

Hope this helps....

i belive this is going a totaly different direction i expected

i know the difference between oem and retail or volume licence , the problem is the sticker say windows 7 pro oa oem software but key checked via show key plus program list this key as windows 7 all volume editions volume mak and i am not sure if that is a coincidence that i mannaged to type in volume mak key that is similar to my sticker key, syicker key got rebranded as volume licence after binding it to microsoft account or was it a fraud sticker with volume key printed on oem blank coa sticker and i didn't noticed that before because everything was working on old pc

i was thinking of upgrading my oem pc with few things that may or may not make the broken pc unrecognizable by microsoft and use "this computer hardware has changed recently" option in troubleshooting
where i live this sorts of upgrade is regarded by law as legal as if this was the same computer with windows 10 digital licence it was however reworked to work only once per licence if i remember corectly

we had state inspection of software legality at work and few computers upgraded this way passed it as still being legal

kokodin said:

i belive this is going a totaly different direction i expected

Perhaps because you're taking the thread in a different direction?

The thread title suggested a 'dodgy COA' sticker was an issue. Several people have replied with factual information about licencing. Now you appear to want to change direction to ask whether a currently-stored Windows 10 'digital entitlement' may be affected by hardware changes you haven't specified.

Yes, of course there is a very good chance you will invalidate the current stored 'digital entitlement'. However, without further specific information about what you are planning to do, I doubt that any of the many very experienced gurus here will be able to advise you re: any possible subsequent licencing issues.

I suspect you may be very aware of this.

Best of luck to you.

well what am i going to do with the licence or not is not the issue here, if i do something illegal i be responsible for my actions and i don't need any help in commiting crimes :P
i was more interested if the sticker on that pc was by itself dodgy, quite literally i want to discover if it is in fact a faked sticker , with volume key printed on it, or did i invoked the satan by guessing 4 smudged letters and i just happen to find working volume key at random, or does show key plus simply resolved the key wrong. it is a microsoft store version.

i like making small stealth computers out of old oem computers and i simply happen to have one with a coa (or rather oa) sticker that seems normal and oryginal, does not have any signs of being faked and it did activate and bind to my personal microsoft account with no indication of being abnormal. why then it is resolved as volume key?
but since motherboard or something else itself does not like to post right now i can't check if the installed key on that machine is oem or volume, or did it somehow change and transform after binding the pc to my account, all i have is sticker for this one and a possible way of using it if it is in fact real key

if i really wanted a key for free, legal or not, i wouldn't be asking about that here, because if i like i have a stack of unused oem boxes for 7 home and pro at work , i would just have to ask my boss. and those keys and stickers are fully readable brand new still in foil

Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy – tangible or intangible
– and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement
granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder
sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a
transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy. Therefore, even if the licence
agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of
that copy.

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/...cp120094en.pdf

Superfly said:

There are billions of combinations for each key that that may share the same sequence of characters - theses are valid for installation of the edition it shows but not necessarily activatable.

Can you PM me a pic of the COA key and the key you managed to get to pass validation?

I can check the ProductID on the sticker and see if I can get the correct key PID.

Sorry for not being here to read that on time ,
I made a small mistake, this is a sticker i registered to my windows account but it isn't the one from computer from last year that got flooded, It is from a computer that was bought for place i work in back around 2013 along with a batch of other dell optiplexes 755 . And it was half killed when one of the kids switched mains voltage switch on the power suply. for few years worked as a frankensteinian computer with oem motherboard and rest of the hardware but external off the shelve power suply.
I know irrelevant for the discussion ,both computers finaly died in the same room around the same time though, but there is a small detail, we had all stickers cataloged at work when we bought the computers, and i checked the documentation for any swaped letters, and i got the serial 100% corect.
That being said we had one computer in that batch that had problems activating wondows 7 pro from the get go but i am not sure if it was this one , or a completly unrelated case. Because back then i was totaly green as an it tech and making my own installation media with removed ei.cfg fixed that copy of windows activation problems on a first try, but again i am not sure if that was that exact computer , it was way before my work place moved to new building and all computers were redistributed back then.

The thing i might say however is that all stickes of dell optiplex 755 computers at one point (between 2013 and 2016 when we upgraded them all to free windows 10) did activated from the same copy of windows 7 pro installation image redistributed via clonezilla to all of them and just reactivated by typing in the sticker serial, every 6 months or so around. So around 6 times in a row there was no problem with that particular serial, and ever since windows 10 upgrade microsoft filled in digital licence activation for us, and again the computer never had problems with auto activation of the same copy of windows 10 installation we rolled out between 2016 and 2019 when those computers were all replaced.
i am 100% sure the serial key is the same as it was, it wouldn't change in our dosumentation for a sake of discussion, however it is the only one bonded to microsoft account, my personal account, and for an unknown reason now identyfi by show key plus as volume key instead of oem key
i am freaked out mostly because i am not sure if volume key could be even bonded to personal microsoft account,but it is.
When i last installed windows on that computer in activation tab system was labeled as "this copy of windows was activated by digital licence bounded to your microsoft account" and it only activated from that day onward when i am: A installing windows typing in the whole key by hand (don't have a key option won't activate anymore) B i must use my microsoft account to activate the system and pick my computer from the list of my devices (does not activate on other computer though, even with the key typed in, it works still like an oem licence most likely)

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