Hello people I have recently changed my CPU, Motherboard and RAMs so I was planning on reinstalling windows on my PC. Last time I installed Windows was probably or so 10 years ago and I can’t remember for the life of me how I activated it.
Any recommendations on activating the new install? Or is it too much trouble nowadays and should I just buy a key?
Which Windows? Windows 10 and above have the key attached to your Microsoft account, so you shouldn’t have any issues. I’m pretty sure they’re free now anyways (in exchange for being spyware).
It isn’t mandatory? Can I detach my account from an install that is already registered, or would they just make the association anyways with the hardware specs?
Any random win7/win10/win11 key works.
Personally I scratch of the old win7 keys of old customers that gave them to us for recycling amd use them for myself :)
https://massgrave.dev/
Use this. I’ve used myself loads of times. Even better if you can get your hands on an IoT LTSC version of Windows 10 and then activate it using this script
This works if you signed in with your Microsoft account, are scrapping the old PC (or at least not using the copy of Windows), and are installing the same version of Windows on the new hardware.
During installation select the option for I have no activation key. Once Windows is installed, open settings and select the activate Windows option. Go through the activation troubleshooter and there’s an option to transfer the key from an old installation. Select the correct one based on whatever you called the old installation, and you should be set.
There’s lots of good advice in this thread, but there’s no point in pirating a copy of Windows when you already own one.
