Activation after hardware upgrade

dexsk said:

Just a quick question please, is there any way of reactivating a digital entitlement license obtained by upgrading from Win7 for free, on upgraded hardware, without having to link a MS account? Privacy issues and all that...I know phone activation worked for me with Win7 once after I've overhauled my PC in the past.

Thanks :)

If it's a Retail key, it retains transfer rights, and you can call MS for activation on your "new" system. Linking an MS account or not, an OEM license is not transferable. So, depending on what exactly your hardware upgrade was, you may be looking at buying a new license.

najeeb said:

well well 50 views and 0 replies

anyways i have a similar issue , so ill add that here too .

my mother board and processor fried pretty much , which meant transferring windows 10 to a new pc , and that i did

issue is i was unaware of linking the product to my Microsoft account after the aniversary update , but further researching showed that i didnt have to since i regularly logged into the ms account . and it was for those who were using a local account , im correct ?

i upgraded from windows 8.1 64bit pro now when i try to activate my windows linked to my account i have this error


now i cant use the change product key etc because i never wrote it down from the system window , but this surely shouldnt be a stupid reason from ms to lock users out of the windows?

Well well, if it wasn't a retail key, then it doesn't have transfer rights.
There has been some talk about linking your devices to an MS account for future reactivation after hardware changes, but OEM licenses are tied to the original machine. So, if you change enough hardware to constitute a new machine, it will not activate. If it was an OEM license you moved to a new machine, there's nothing to do but buy a new license. I suspect linking to an MS account is an easy way tor MS to gather data about usage/number of devices per person, etc. However, I have seen reactivations on OEM keys for replacing MBs like for like after failure, via a phone call to MS.

najeeb said:

it was a retail copy .

the only issue is i never wrote down my key after it . and as for system change , all except for gpu

You'll have to find your Retail key - from the purchase box, the digital receipt, something. You must have that to call MS for activation.

One long shot is to look at your OneDrive account. If you had the OneDrive app installed and working on that old system, it will show up in your list of PCs/devices. Maybe if you can convince MS somehow that the PC listed has died and you'd like to move the key - maybe they can help (although I can't imagine how).

najeeb said:

ill try calling them , rip my credit xD calling to usa is ridiculous here

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