Making sure I can reinstall Windows 10 from scratch

[Sredni]

Ok, so long story short, I bought a used (ex-leasing) Dell M6800 from a brick and mortar store and it has Windows 10 that is activated "using your organization's activation service".
Here's the screenshot from Settings - Updates - Activation:



I do not trust the seller (long history) so I would like to know:

1) Can I verify this is a legit activation?

2) Can I reinstall Windows 10 from scratch - ideally a new SSD - by using the product ID recovered from the registry (or any other piece of information available to me)?

If I click on the information link on that Activation page, I am sent to an unhelpful page on microsoft's website that lists four types of activations (not the one shown above, at least not verbatim) and how to link a Microsoft account to the activation (something I would rather not do).

I am a bit scared of invalidating a (hopefully) legit activation by only trying a fresh install on another SSD.
What's your experience?

EDIT:
Backstory on the software: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/why-cant-my-copy-of-win10-pro-be-activated/

[IanB]

I cannot speak from experience, but I suspect the original license was a volume license belonging to the original organization that owned it the PC. Most likely you cannot reinstall and reactivate Windows unless you belong to that organization and have access to that private network and/or the IT services in that organization.

What you could do instead is buy a separate retail Windows license and activate using that.

[pickle9000]

This works

https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

or the manual way

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-recover-your-windows-product-key/8687ef5d-4d32-41fc-9310-158f8e5f02e3

Keep in mind that UEFI can be a pain. If you have a Microsoft account logging in before you start can save the day if you are changing hardware.

To verify,

Get your key first using software above
Log in to the computer using your MS account. 
Download an ISO of Windows and make an installer usb stick.
Remove the old drive and do nothing to it, you can just put it back in, check your bios drive type and config.
Put in new drive and boot off the usb stick.
This is a hardware change so if prompted select hardware change
It may ask you to log into your MS account and or for the key during the install. This can be done later on the system information screen.

If it activates your good.


Is it a valid key? Probably, Microsoft has batch keys being used all over to encourage people to get on the next version of windows. You can search for your key.

[pickle9000]

In case I wasn't clear. Changing the hard drive to an ssd is a hardware change.
If the key is a batch one you should be able to find it with a google search.
Logging into a a Microsoft account transfers the key to you and allows windows to be reinstalled. if the hardware is not changed it will just work. Corporate or refurbish keys can be used without issue.

[pickle9000]

Another key finder, oldie but a goodie

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

If you have an old version of Windows then Win10 can often be installed.

[Jeroen3]

Your license is a Volume License.
It expires after 180 days without contact of the companies license server (probably on intranet), or when the company starts garbage collecting.

Check if there is a Windows sticker under the battery for an OEM License.
This means you will lose this license and have to buy a new one. There are websites around where you can get licenses for a few dollars, try them, they work. License from other world region or something. It may need phone activation. But if you get another volume license you have been duped.

[RoGeorge]

Or, install Ubuntu or some other Linux.  It's free and doesn't need any accounts or activations.  Seems like the hardware of your laptop model is supported by Linux.

[Veteran68]

I'm not certain a MS account login will preserve a volume license that can no longer validate against its license server. Worth a try, if it doesn't work you're no worse off, but you should be prepared to buy another license. As was mentioned, there are numerous vendors selling OEM and "retail" keys at prices <$50 US. I've bought a few and can confirm they were not volume licenses, though I suspect they were most likely misused OEM licenses and are violating MS terms in some way that MS isn't terribly concerned about enforcing. They do activate as "retail" licenses though and I've never had to call in to activate them. I've done this with Windows 10 and Windows 11 licenses. Only once did I have an activation fail with an invalid key (likely reused) but contacted the vendor, was immediately sent another key, and it just worked.

One tip I've used for years to help avoid the "changed hardware" issue is before re-activating Windows on the new drive, change it's volume serial number to match your old drive. You can see your old drive's serial number at the top of a 'dir' command output or with the 'vol' command in a command prompt:

Code: [Select]

C:\>vol
 Volume in drive C is Windows
 Volume Serial Number is 1E81-8803
Then use a tool such as VolumeID from SysInternals to set the same serial number on the new drive *before* activating. Heed the warnings on that page to boot clean (Safe Mode preferably), change the ID, and immediately reboot. Even better, run it from a bootable rescue media. Otherwise Windows and NTFS can get confused when the serial number of a mounted drive changes.

The drive serial is one of the more highly-weighted inputs to the hardware hashing algorithm MS uses. The activation is designed to be tolerant of individual hardware upgrades over time, but too many things changing at once is considered a "new computer." Also different hardware is assigned different weights, some with more "points" than others. You're allowed only so many "points" of change at once before you're not allowed to re-activate the same key. As I recall, the drive ID and MAC address carries the most weight and changing them are more likely to cause activation to fail, so cloning them from the old hardware is a good way to reduce the chance that it trips the threshold requiring a new key. You might even get away with changing them back later, one at a time.

Or, install Ubuntu or some other Linux.  It's free and doesn't need any accounts or activations.  Seems like the hardware of your laptop model is supported by Linux.

As much as I love and use Linux, not everyone has the luxury, if not desire, of running something other than Windows.

[Ranayna]

In my experience, these Keyfinders do not work properly anymore.
While they will show a key, these keys are generic keys that can be used to install, but not to activate.
And you don't need a key to install Windows 10/11 nowadays anyway, except for Enterprise or Education editions.

Since you want to swap the drive anyway, i would swap the drives just install Windows on the new drive.
On a Precision Workstation i would install Pro, very likely that is what it came with anyway. And if it did, and that Pro edition was activated, it might automatically activate, without a key.

And if it does not activate: As long as you do not require personalisation (set window colors and screensaver), and can live with a small watermark on the desktop, you do not really *need* to activate Windows ever. The days of inactive Windows automatically shutting down or massively nagging are over.

[nfmax]

Now Window 10 is approaching end-of-life, and Microsoft are no longer selling product keys, the legit resellers are unloading their stocks of keys at 'reasonable' prices. Recently, I did a fresh Windows 10 Pro install, on an Intel Mac Mini using Apple Boot Camp. I was able to buy a key for £40 which worked with no trouble, so I can now log on locally without using my Microsoft account. Unless you are flat broke this is probably the path of least resistance.

This Mac Mini was my old 'main' computer, now replaced with an Apple Silicon M2 Pro, but I do need to run some Windows-only software. Using Windows 10 Pro lets me run Remote Desktop from the new Apple mini, which Home doesn't.

[Ian.M]

A Dell M6800 would have shipped with one of:

• Windows® 8 Pro (64-Bit)
• Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate (32-Bit or 64-Bit); Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (32-Bit or 64-Bit)
• Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® version 6.4
• Ubuntu® 12.04 SP1 Linux

As Microsoft disabled Win10 free upgrade from Windows 7/8 back in September you may have difficulty reinstalling Win 10 and auto-activating it using the BIOS OEM key.

[jpanhalt]

Now Window 10 is approaching end-of-life, and Microsoft are no longer selling product keys, the legit resellers are unloading their stocks of keys at 'reasonable' prices.

Are there any legitimate Internet sellers?  I am interested.  May the 32/64 bit version work with my Windows 7 32/64 bit software?

[nfmax]

Now Window 10 is approaching end-of-life, and Microsoft are no longer selling product keys, the legit resellers are unloading their stocks of keys at 'reasonable' prices.

Are there any legitimate Internet sellers?  I am interested.  May the 32/64 bit version work with my Windows 7 32/64 bit software?

I used https://www.msofficestore.uk/, but that probably doesn't help you much. I have no idea how legit they actually are, but for the sum in question, I thought it was worth a punt.

[Sredni]

I cannot speak from experience, but I suspect the original license was a volume license belonging to the original organization that owned it the PC.

I apologize for not including this piece of information from the start.
From the service tag I was able to ascertain that this system was shipped with Windows 7 pro. Then when I got it, it had Windows 10 not activated (and other problems, like the disk that was supposed to be new with 12thousand hours of usage).
The seller swapped the old Hynix 512GB SSD with a Patriot burst 480GB (I guess he could not find a cheaper one) and put an activated copy of Windows 10 on it.
So, this version of windows is not activated by the former company it was acquired from, but by this... peculiar seller with a special relationship with truth, so to speak.

I bought a system with win10 so I expect to have a legit copy of windows 10.
I already got the product key from the registry.

Most likely you cannot reinstall and reactivate Windows unless you belong to that organization and have access to that private network and/or the IT services in that organization.

In this case the organization would be the seller. Which I can only hope did the right and legit thing, but... this was the keyboard he guaranteed was backlit: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/what-did-you-buy-today-post-your-latest-purchase
If you go on my youtube channel you will see that instead of a 240W adapted he gave me a 180W one, and then replaced it with a 210W one (a step at the time...), gave me a 2015 battery as new, then replaced with what looks like a 2014 battery with reprogrammed chip that dies at 60% discharge, told me he would replace the dead CMOS battery but did not...
So,  I do not trust him exactly as a brother, hence why I am asking for independent advice.

[Veteran68]

I've purchased cheap retail/OEM (not volume) Windows 10 and 11 keys through multiple vendors, including Kinguin and BitsDuJour (one of many StackCommerce storefronts that sell them). They activated just fine as retail keys, and my desktop Windows 11 Pro is still working 2 years later. I used the other keys for VMs that also still work. As I mentioned before, I had to get one key replaced when it looked like it had been used already, and that was pretty painless. Just sent them a screenshot of the activation failure and they sent another key that worked. These dealers have been in business for years and are well established, they're not some fly-by-night operation.

I've also recently bought two Adobe Acrobat Pro 2023 keys (one for Windows, one for Mac) from SoftwareShore, who also sells Windows licenses which I've not tried. I'm not as familiar with Adobe's license key schemes, but these looked like they might have been volume licenses. In fact I think Adobe only offers perpetual licenses to Acrobat 2023 through volume licenses now, regular retail customers must subscribe to get anything newer than the 2020 version. So who knows for long they'll work, but for now they do. AFAICT from their domain registration, SoftwareShore has been around for about a year now, and they even accept Klarna as a payment option which would seem to grant them some degree of legitimacy. While they're almost certainly some unauthorized grey market software dealer, if they were outright ripping people off I doubt they'd still be in business under the same DBA. Most of those sites tend to advertise heavily, make a lot of sales, and disappear before popping up under a new DBA. But YMMV -- I'm not trying to vouch for them other than to say I took a chance and it went fine (so far).

At the prices we're talking about, the risk is pretty low, but always take precautions. When I'm dealing with an unknown vendor where I don't have trusted references to vouch for them, I'll use a one-time CC number for the purchase. Either through Privacy.com or one of my CC providers that offer virtual numbers. I set the virtual limit to just over the purchase amount, and then to be doubly sure I close the virtual card immediately after the purchase. That way I don't have to worry about any fraudulent additional charges later.

[Sredni]

Or, install Ubuntu or some other Linux.  It's free and doesn't need any accounts or activations.  Seems like the hardware of your laptop model is supported by Linux.

Oh yes, I bought it for that.
Initially I wanted to install my copy of Win7 but I have to admit I kind of like Win10, so since it is already paid for I wanted to keep that as well.

Ideally I would like to triple boot: Win10, Win7, and Linux (Debian). But I am not sure the two windows would play nice together.
Right now I want to make sure I do not have a pirated version of Windows 10.

[Halcyon]

Dual (or triple) booting is usually a terrible idea unless you really know what you're doing and you're prepared to fix boot issues every now and then. You might shut down your machine one day and the next day it's unusable.

All it takes is an OS update to completely screw up your boot loader. Just be forewarned.

[Sredni]

I have been multibooting since the days of Windows95 (back then I had won 3.11 or something like that in one of the partitions!).
But I have always done that with old bioses and MBRs.

I need to get up to speed with UEFI and GPT which, I gather, can be a pain to work with, but multiboot is a must for me.
Actually I might even ditch UEFI and GPT to go back to legacy tech, since I don't think I will want to use drives bigger than 2 TB (if that was the limit).

Thanks for the heads up, anyway.
Suggestion for up to date instructions for modern multibooting?

[IanB]

Suggestion for up to date instructions for modern multibooting?

I think the modern way to do it is through virtualization. An introduction here:

[rdl]

Okay, I know nothing about Windows 10, but with Windows 7 there are almost zero negatives to using it un-activated. There is a "hack" to make it work as a normal activated install, but I stopped doing it years ago. I decided it was more trouble than it's worth.

Another thing to consider is that Microsoft is not really in the business of selling operating systems anymore. I'm surprised it hasn't reached the point of them just handing out Windows for free.

[Halcyon]

Another thing to consider is that Microsoft is not really in the business of selling operating systems anymore. I'm surprised it hasn't reached the point of them just handing out Windows for free.

They are going the opposite way. They want you to pay for features on a subscription basis, for things that would ordinarily be available in a particular off-the-shelf edition. This is more noticeable in the corporate sector where employees are using Microsoft 365 accounts. If you don't have a certain subscription/licence level, certain features are locked out.

And it's not cheap. E3 and E5 enterprise licences are about AUD$57 and $86 per user, per month respectively. OK sure, it includes other features like Microsoft Office etc... but still, it can get expensive very quickly. (That's on an annual commitment too, it's more expensive month-to-month.)

Microsoft want a "Operating System as a Service" or "Computing as a Service" model and are increasingly putting features behind paywalls.

If you want to see a side-by-side comparison, have a look at: https://m365maps.com/matrix.htm#000111111111111111111
Scroll down to the "Windows" section.

Of course this isn't applicable to home users who simply get Windows as part of their computer purchase (or buy a retail copy), but I can see it going this way in the future. It wasn't that long ago where you would buy a certain edition of Windows for your organisation and it was yours perpetually (which you can still do of course, but you miss out on a lot of those management and security features that businesses use).

This is where I think Apple macOS have had the advantage for many years. One version of the OS does everything. No licensing as it comes with the machine. No need to tie it to any online accounts (unless you want to). It just works out of the box.

[Sredni]

Well, this laptop is the gift that keeps on giving... 

I had a little chat session with Microsoft's Copilot AI and it suggested me how to get info on my license. Using

Code: [Select]

slmgr /dlv
In an elevated CMD prompt.
So, here's the (redacted) screenshot of my 'license':



It appears to be a volume license, set to expire after 180 days - as hinted above - but... the strange thing is that it says I have 176 days left. But I received this laptop with this version of windows on the 23rd of December, so...
Is this how a crack work?

Can this guy be so brazen as to sell cracked copies of Windows on all his computers? I mean, this is a brick and mortar store, not some ethereal seller over the internet. Can a licence like this one be somehow legit?

EDIT:
Just checked, and the time is running...  :'( . I have now less minutes available till expiration which means the obvious: the 180 days are days of effective usage of the OS. And on Microsoft's website it says that if I have that kind of license on a stand-alone system, then it's not genuine.
I wonder what was this guy thinking...

[Halcyon]

It's not necessarily cracked, but rather a Key Management Server which is often used in businesses. They re-authenticate back to the KMS every so often to check that the licence is still valid and if not, falls back into Unlicensed mode. This would be expected if it's a former corporate laptop.

[Ranayna]

There are various cracks available as far as i know, and some are using KMS as far as i know.

I am on a legitmately KMS activated Enterprise Windows, and that currently also has 177 days left. It will not constantly talk to KMS. So that alone is not an indicator.
But it should also show the IP of the KMS server. Is that really empty, or did you redact that?

Whatever though: You will very likely lose this KMS activated "license" if you re-install from an official Microsoft Media.

[Jeroen3]

Yesterday I got my new Framework laptop, without OS of course.
And I installed Windows 10 myself without key.
Then I bought a license key from random key seller website for €5.
It worked fine.

Actually I bought two, one for a friend who just built a new gaming pc. Both worked.