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Restore Windows 10 digital entitlement activation offline
Here is some information about how to successfully backup and restore Windows 10 activation when installed through what Microsoft calls "digital entitlement", i. e. having used the free upgrade offer from a previous Windows version.
It is mainly intended for advanced users with interest in and basic knowledge about how Windows activation works, and to understand everything you should be familiar with the registry, command line and access rights.
As you may already know, having once activated Windows online with a digital entitlement you can always do clean installs through a Windows 10 DVD afterwards without entering a product key, and when connecting to the Internet Windows verifies that it was installed on the same hardware and automatically activate again.
There is however a way to backup this activation information and after a clean install restore it completely offline, without the need of going online once.
Those who have already experimented with methods that were valid on earlier Windows versions up to 8.1, or used activation backup and restore tools for these versions, will have come to the conclusion that these methods do not work with Windows 10's digital entitlement - Windows always insists on connecting to the Internet once for activation.
Still the files that contain activation information and need to be backed up and restored are:
%SystemRoot%\System32\spp\store\2.0\data.dat
%SystemRoot%\System32\spp\store\2.0\tokens.dat
%SystemRoot%\System32\spp\store\2.0\cache\cache.dat
The trick is now that in Windows 10 there is an additional registry key that needs to be backed up and restored as well - and also this key is not accessible by normal means.
The key in question is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\{7746D80F-97E0-4E26-9543-26B41FC22F79}
When you run Regedit and navigate to said key, you will get an "Access denied" message. Furthermore you will be unable to take ownership or change permissions of that key.
To see its contents and be able to backup and restore it, Regedit must be run with SYSTEM access rights. This can for example be done by downloading the PsTools from Microsoft, then on the command line execute: psexec -i -s regedit.exe
Now you will be able to access the above key and its subkeys, and export it to a .reg file.
After doing a clean install (on the same hardware!), the procedure to restore activation information is:
- Stop the software licensing service on the command line: net stop sppsvc
- Copy back the three .dat files to their respective locations
- Run psexec -i -s regedit.exe again and import the previously backed-up .reg file
- Restart the computer.
Now test if it works by either going to Windows Activation in PC settings, or by executing the following command on the command line: slmgr /xpr
If all went well Windows will tell you it is permanently activated.
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