How do I get a Digital License with a self built OEM install?

Retail would be best but again... can you trust this guy now? Anyway, Good luck.

It seems now that since AU version came out that you get a digital licence even if you use product key activation. There has been a lot of debate in other posts whether this was true with earlier versions but I cannot say if this is true or not.

There is some logic to doing this as it means you can reinstall even without a key, and transfer licence to new device using new activation troubleshooter.

It is still not clear if digital licences "remember" if they came from oem or retail. It is my belief they do not "know". So adherence to EULA if original key was oem is essentially a moral issue.

As I have often stated, MS do not seem to really care that much about minor domestic " transgressions" of EULA - they are solely interested in keeping people in the Windows ecosphere. To put it in perspective, a few extra persons getting it free after 350 million+ upgrades is a drop in the ocean.

My Windows 10 Education install got a DL after upgrading to the AU. Before that it always showed as activated with a Product key. Doing a clean install with a skip key on a PC it had already been installed and activated on, would just install and be unactivated. I had to enter my key to activate it on every install. Now I don't, it has DL and new generic key I've never seen before. My Education versions use my MSDN Retail keys. I'm pretty sure this wasn't supposed to happen with the Education version. It's one of the versions excluded from the free upgrade offer. There is no free upgrade path to that version.

Giving a DL to an OEM install doesn't seem to me, to be a good thing to do? Not if your going to try and stop somebody from illegally transferring them to new hardware. It's just going to make that easier.

There seems to be at least two types of OEM install though OEM DM and OEM:NONSLP, and maybe more Superfly is aware off too?

My win7 pro shows as DL in 1511 on one PC , the newer pc also on Win7 pro Upgrade but on AU, just has a PID and Prod.KEY showing and both are on Microsoft Accounts, though I have not actively "linked" the AU one yet.

the 1511 acticvation info also includes a link to this page which AU doesn't do either...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...-10-activation


A friend's Lenovo laptop which was Upgraded almost immediately on purchase from win 8.1 last year , shows up in his Microsoft account as INVALID and if I use ShowKey on his Win8.1 Key it also says invalid , and I have no idea why.... there doesn't seem to be an activation error though even after doing a clean install of AU after he got some nasty Rootkit and I had to wipe the Drive.


KB.

Kbird said:

There seems to be at least two types of OEM install though OEMM and OEM:NONSLP, and maybe more Superfly is aware off too?

My win7 pro shows as DL in 1511 on one PC , the newer pc also on Win7 pro Upgrade but on AU, just has a PID and Prod.KEY showing and both are on Microsoft Accounts, though I have not actively "linked" the AU one yet.

the 1511 acticvation info also includes a link to this page which AU doesn't do either...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...-10-activation


A friend's Lenovo laptop which was Upgraded almost immediately on purchase from win 8.1 last year , shows up in his Microsoft account as INVALID and if I use ShowKey on his Win8.1 Key it also says invalid , and I have no idea why.... there doesn't seem to be an activation error though even after doing a clean install of AU after he got some nasty Rootkit and I had to wipe the Drive.


KB.

The link above is actually the new activation info for AU version. In previous version, the section "activating after reinstalling windows 10" used to have a second paragraph that said if you used product key activation, you had to reenter it on reinstallation.

In fact the text is inconsistent now i.e

How you activate Windows 10 after reinstalling it depends on how Windows 10 was originally installed on your device.


If you activated a free upgrade to Windows 10 or bought and activated Windows 10 from the Windows Store, you have a digital license for your device. This means you can reinstall the same edition of Windows 10 that your device has a digital license for without entering a product key. During reinstallation, if you’re asked to enter a product key, you can skip this step. Windows 10 will automatically activate online after the installation is complete.

So it says it depends on how originally installed, which means there must be more than one option, then only describes digital licences!

The obvious conclusion is that all installs get a digital licence now OR the original second paragraph has been inadvertently omitted. However evidence from other posts is the former.