Activating windows 10 after major hardware change help

WhyMe said:

How the license should work if MS were to do their job properly and in accordance with both the EULA and their 'unwritten policy':

If the original Win7 or Win8 license was a retail version then you can transfer it to another device and take Microsoft up on their free promotional Win10 upgrade. New motherboard is not a problem. '30 Days' is also not a problem

If the original Win7 or Win8 license was an oem version then you cannot transfer it to another device. Although if you replaced a broken motherboard with a like-for-like replacement then activation would by possible by 'phone and it would again be eligible for the free promotional Win10 upgrade. (However, in this instance the Skylake board should be considered an upgrade as it is not a like-for-like replacement of the broken board. Therefore, the license would be dead).

The OEM key is good for one machine unless it breaks and you own the replacement outright to have MS activate the new machine when you call in. If you sell the machine the disk goes with it automatically! This is why a number of custom pc shops will tend to use volume licensing or pay extra to include the media with each new system sold. But they may buy the OEM type disks in large numbers.

Now speaking about old clunkers I have one for you! Talking about work? Dos was easy compared to writing each and every program you ran on a tiny lcd screen with the Epson HX-20 notebook computer first seen out back in 1982! Talk about vintage that being the first I owned having worked on some 70 of them while in school for Electronics.. The teacher who had started off back in '68 with IBM had a pair of 286s along with a single 386 students used to resumes' at the time.

When one local company decided to upgrade all the sales people, some foremans out in the factory, etc. with updated laptops the 10yr. old clunkers got dropped in my lap! No one else even wanted to look at them! Some were in rough shape and most ended up simply being stripped for parts in order to get a number of the best shape models in working order to hand out. Later someone from the sales dept. came looking for one since they needed to look something old. I almost bought one when first seen at one place that carried all the new stuff including CB radios and scanners being an electronics specialty shop back in early 82 when those were just out and ran up close to $400. I think $379.99 was the list on those. They ran off of micro cassette tapes where you stored the programs you had to write up yourself while some sample programs as well as early prewrote programs were available separately.

Following the Dos/3.1 days that's when life became much easier since I could still run the 16bit dos apps in the Dos mode 95 brought in through a window or shutdown to dos mode for a few 8bit run lately on DosBOX of all things! I wouldn't know about 28 5.25" floppies are as installing the OS since the Epsons lacked any but of the six 3.5" disks Disk #1 went on my when trying to get 3.1 installed on a VM for old times sake back when 7 was first new in RC form by then as the XP Mode second release was out which saw the Virtual PC 2007 rolled up in one single download rather then the need to install the VPC first and go for the XP Mode separately as first seen.

Now you see options like VM Player, Virtual Box, Hyper-V that can actually work things much better as well as VM Player but for any of those old pre-XP versions your best shot is 9x, ME, 2000 rather then task it would take at this time to see boot floppy images made up as long as the particular program supports running the older versions however. Pre-XP leaves Hyper-V out!