Info For those upgrading their OEM Windows 10 system...

[JWMiddleton]

I'm posting this here as it might help those who are thinking of upgrading their computer.

In Nov 2015 I upgrade my system from an E8500 to an I7-4790K. This meant changing the motherboard and RAM as well. I bought an OEM version of Win 10 as my previous build used Win 8.1 OEM, which started as Win 7. I wasn't wild about having to spend another $100+ to buy a new copy to go with the new upgrade. I finally decided to go ahead with the upgrade and to buy one of the "grey market" license for $20 to $40 if need be.

The new CPU is a i9-10850K on a Z490 MB. Old MB was Z97. I installed all the new stuff and cloned my SATA SSD to M.2 NVMe SSD, disconnect the old boot drive and rebooted. It came up fine and after a new minutes a message popped up from Microsoft that I'd made some major changes to my system and ask me to login. A popup box asked for the pin I used to login. I enter the 4 digits and Microsoft was happy. Needless to say I was releaved and very pleased! I've attached a screenshot of the proof that it is an OEM license and is still valid.

John

 

[MalVeauX]

Yup, nothing wrong with OEM licenses that you get on the `bay for $30. The important thing is to simply attach it to your account. Then you don't even need the key. Change hardware and just let it see it and login and it should update your account.

Very best,

 

[aleader]

Yah, I always worry about his every time I upgrade or switch components as all of my licenses (4 of them) were Windows 7 OEMs in laptops or those cheap ones I bought off Amazon on CD. Usually everything went fine. I sometimes had to dig out a key and get out the magnifying glass to read it. I eventually figured out to email the codes to myself so I had them.

When I moved them all to Win 10 when the upgrades were 'free', I attached them all to my account. I just recently did a complete rebuild from a B450/Ryzen 3600/1070 to a B550/5600x/5700XT and did have a bit of an issue activating Windows this time for some reason. Windows had no problem when I swapped out a Z97/4670k to the B450/3600 though.

When I clicked the 'activation troubleshooting' link it allowed me to pick one of the attached licenses and it worked, but I found it odd that all of a sudden it decided that there was an issue.

I don't actually know if I picked the right one (my desktop) or one of the laptops as there was no distinguishing names for any of them, but everything seems to work.