The free Windows 10 license you receive is tied to your PC’s hardware. You’re still allowed to use Windows 10 on that same PC even after changing its hardware. Activating that license is easier than ever in Windows 10’s Anniversary Update.

• Transfer Windows 10 License To New Pc
• Transfer Windows 10 License
• Transfer Windows 10 License To New Account

A quick tutorial on how to transfer Windows 10 License to new computer, new hard drive, or new motherboard by transferring over the Windows 10 license key or product key from one to another. In the case of a blocked Windows 7 or Windows 8 product key, I have had to first install Windows 7 or 8 on the new computer, use phone activation to activate the Windows 7 or Windows 8, then upgrade to Windows 10 to establish the digital license for Windows 10.

How to Associate Your Windows 10 License with a Microsoft Account

In Windows 10’s Anniversary Update, it’s now possible to associate your free Windows 10 license with your Microsoft account so you can more easily reactivate your PC after hardware changes in the future. This happens automatically when you sign into your PC with a Microsoft account.

If you haven’t yet signed in with a Microsoft account, head to Settings > System & Security > Activation and you’ll be prompted to add a Microsoft account to make reactivation easier.

Once you’ve added a Microsoft account, you’ll see the “Windows 10 is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account” message here.

How to Activate Your Windows 10 License After a Hardware Change

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When reinstalling Windows 10 after a hardware change–especially a motherboard change–be sure to skip the “enter your product key” prompts while installing it.

Microsoft has never actually wanted to explain exactly how the hardware-based Windows activation process works. Just replacing your hard drive or upgrading your graphics card shouldn’t cause a problem. If you’ve just changed a few peripherals, Windows 10 may just automatically activate itself after you clean-install it. But, if you’ve changed the motherboard or just a lot of other components, Windows 10 may see your computer as a new PC and may not automatically activate itself.

Head to Settings > Update & Security > Activation and you’ll see a “Troubleshoot” option if activation failed. Click that option and sign in with the Microsoft account you associated your license with. You’ll be able to tell Windows that you “changed hardware on this device recently” and select your PC from a list of devices associated with your Microsoft account. Microsoft’s documentation now explains exactly how this works.

Why You Can’t Just Use a Simple Product Key

RELATED:How Does Windows Activation Work?

The free Windows 10 license works very differently from previous Windows licensing systems. These all required a product key. Even modern Windows 8 and 8.1 PCs–and new PCs that come with Windows 10–have a Windows product key embedded in their UEFI firmware. If you buy a new copy of Windows 10–for example, to install it on a PC you’re building yourself–you’ll also have a product key.

In this case, the product key would always serve to activate Windows. But Microsoft hasn’t been handing out Windows 10 product keys to upgraders. There’s no way to find your Windows 10 product key if you’ve upgraded for free–you just don’t have one.

The free Windows 10 license Microsoft is providing to upgraders works differently. Microsoft won’t issue you a Windows 10 product key. Instead, when you perform an upgrade from within Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or Windows 8.1, the upgrade process registers a unique ID associated with your PC’s hardware on Microsoft’s Windows activation servers.

In the future, whenever you install Windows 10 on that same PC, it will automatically report to Microsoft’s activation servers. Microsoft will confirm that the PC with that specific hardware configuration is allowed to use Windows 10, and it’ll automatically be activated.

This isn’t actually made clear in the installation process itself. To clean-install Windows 10 on a machine activated in this way, you have to continually skip all the product key prompts while installing it.

This automatic process only works if your PC has the same hardware it had when you upgraded to Windows 10.

You Can’t Move a Free Windows 10 License to Another PC

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Transfer Windows 10 License To New Pc

Bear in mind that this will only work on the same PC. This does create some an inconvenient situation for people who bought a full retail license–not an OEM license–of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1. Most people don’t do this, though–even people building their own PCs usually seem to buy OEM copies of Windows.

Those retail licenses are portable between different PCs, so you can take them with you from PC to PC. You might have purchased a Windows 7 license and built your own PC. Build a new PC a few years later and you can take that Windows 7 license with you as long as you remove it from the first machine. Rinse and repeat over and over–as long as you’d like to continue using Windows 7.

However, that free Windows 10 license you get as part of the upgrade process is tied to an individual PC. Even if you upgraded from a retail copy of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1, you won’t be given a retail copy of Windows 10. You just can’t move that free Windows 10 license to another PC. Now that the free Windows 10 upgrade offer is over, you’ll have to buy a new copy of Windows 10 if you want to move it to an entirely different PC.

This may feel a bit inconvenient. But, on the other hand, that Windows 10 license was just a free bonus in the first place. Retail licenses of Windows 10 you purchase can be moved between PCs in the same way.

In the past, Microsoft told people to contact its support staff. Gabriel Aul, Vice President of Engineering for the Windows & Devices group at Microsoft, tweeted that you could contact support from within Windows 10, explain the situation, and they’ll activate Windows 10 for you. This is no longer the officially encouraged way to reactivate Windows 10 after a hardware change now that the automatic troubleshooter is here.

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Microsoft offers Windows 10 license for a single computer as well as multiple computers. If you purchased a single PC license and used it on a computer, but now you need to transfer that Windows 10 license to another computer, here is what you need to do. Obviously, you cannot just enter the license key on the second computer to activate that. Obviously, you have to enter that key, but you need to do something before doing such a thing. Therefore, this article will let you know how to move a valid license key from one Windows 10 computer to another. Not only Windows 10 but also you can use the same method to transfer Windows 7/8/8.1 license to another PC.

This tutorial is for them, who have only one license and who do not want to spend money to purchase a second license. Also, you must be fine with a license deactivation on the old PC.

Let’s assume that you have a very old computer and you recently purchased a newly configured PC. After installing Windows 10, you want to activate it with a valid product key. You can purchase a new license, but if you are not going to use the old PC, there is no means to spend money on a new license. Also, you must have the same edition of Windows 10 on both computers. If you have a Home version license and you installed Pro version, you cannot activate that even after having a valid product key.

To get started, you need to deactivate the product key from the old computer. Otherwise, that key won’t be installed on the new computer. This is very easy, and it takes hardly one minute to complete the whole task. The best thing is you do not have to download any third-party software to get it done.

How to Deactivate Old Windows 10 Computer?

Transfer Windows 10 License

As mentioned earlier, you do not need any third-party software, but you have to use the Command Prompt. Therefore, run Command Prompt as administrator first. For that, do a search for CMD in the Taskbar search box, right-click on the corresponding result, and select Run as administrator. After that, enter this command-

You should be greeted with a message called “Product key from registry cleared successfully.” if you are getting this message, that means you have successfully deactivated your Windows 10 installation on your old computer. In other words, now you can use your existing product key to activate the new Windows 10 computer.

How to Activate New Windows 10 Computer with Existing License?

Again, you have to open the Command Prompt with administrator privilege. After opening Command Prompt as administrator, you need to enter this command-

Transfer Windows 10 License To New Account

You need to replace the xxxx with your valid product key. If everything went right, you should find a success message like “Installed product key xxxx successfully.”

What happens if you do not activate Windows 10?

Every Windows user should activate his/her computer. Otherwise, you may not be able to use all the features of Windows 10. For example, you cannot personalize your computer and so on. No matter what you do, you cannot utilize those user-friendly options in Windows 10 Settings panel.

Also, your computer may restart automatically. That means if you are doing something important, you might lose that. Considering everything, you should install a valid license key on your Windows 10 PC.