Changed laptop's HDD to SSD, want to transfer windows 10 key

Superfly said:

Thanx M for that.. been struggling with getting to grips on how to troubleshoot digital licences to include in the Activation diagnostic tool, - thus far all I have is the activation server reported code and the store licensing event log (really cryptic stuff) to go on...

I agree that it's making the EULA difficult to enforce...not that it ever was, TBH.

I don't think the OEM's are at all knowledgeable about digital activation to provide support - thus that will have to shift to MS (especially if activated with an MSA)

As far as I can tell, there is no difference between a digital licence obtained from an OEM upgrade, retail upgrade, OEM 10 initial install, or retail 10 initial install.

This perhaps suggests MS are moving away from OEM versions ie everything will be 'limited' retail in effect. I say limited as you can only transfer two or three times to a new mobo (I guess MS consider very few people would change that frequently).

I am not sure you can do anything to handle digital licences as the algorithms for the hardware binding are an MS secret (presumably to minimise piracy).

You would be amazed at how many posts I have seen where people say 'just login with MS account on new PC and it will activate' showing a complete lack of understanding of how the new digital licences and the link to MS accounts works. Of course, it will not activate automatically - you have to manually transfer licence using the troubleshooter.

Quite a few people think their DL is tied to their Microsoft Account and not to the device. And that they have to log in with their Microsoft Account to activate. There is lots of confusion on what linking actually does, and doesn't do.

Microsoft doesn't give out very much, if any detailed info on activation, for good reasons. I've had to go to some shady areas of the internet to figure out what I've gleamed over the years. I have no Interest in how to pirate Windows, but when things go wrong with legitimate installs, you have to know what's what to sort it out. I'm still a long way from what some of you know and can do though.

Moving to all DL sounds good. But I see that creating extra work for the OEM's. How do they pre activate and get a DL for every device before they box and ship it? Assuming there are no more product codes? A new thread on this subject might be in order?

alphanumeric said:

Quite a few people think their DL is tied to their Microsoft Account and not to the device. And that they have to log in with their Microsoft Account to activate. There is lots of confusion on what linking actually does, and doesn't do.

Microsoft doesn't give out very much, if any detailed info on activation, for good reasons. I've had to go to some shady areas of the internet to figure out what I've gleamed over the years. I have no Interest in how to pirate Windows, but when things go wrong with legitimate installs, you have to know what's what to sort it out. I'm still a long way from what some of you know and can do though.

Moving to all DL sounds good. But I see that creating extra work for the OEM's. How do they pre activate and get a DL for every device before they box and ship it? Assuming there are no more product codes? A new thread on this subject might be in order?

Actually, there is not really any mystery over linking. It is very simple - digital licence activation is still tied to hardware in same way as always. All the link does (in effect) keep a record of your digital licence on your MS account (presumably its details), so if it fails to activate due to a hardware change, you can MANUALLY activate the licence on new hardware as the MS account has the necessary info.

Re. digital licences on oem, I assume they would continue to use bios embedded keys. The digital licence is granted during installation. I think total elimination of product keys is unlikely but less reliance already now is good.

I know what it does. The thing is I have several PC's with multiple Digital Licenses. Only one of which, as far as I can tell, is linked to my Microsoft Account, the currently installed OS on each device. Which one and or how many of those DL can I transfer is the confusing part. And why I ended up in that situation in the first place. Some of it was beyond my control. Anyway, this (my having multiple DL's) has all ben hashed over before in another thread so no need to go into that again. I just wanted to pint that there are parts of the mechanism that make you want to just shake your head and wonder why did they do that?