Probably blocks the MAS activation scripts from working too.
Sure enough, on their site:
Note: Microsoft servers are currently rejecting HWID activation requests when activating through MAS, we’re checking what’s going on now. Use the KMS38 activation option for now.
You can buy a used mini PC for less than the price of a new Windows 11 license. I know there are cheaper license sites out there (unclear how legit they are) but this way you get a Windows license and a spare PC to run Linux!
There could be a bit of a caveat here. I when I purchased my laptop it had windows 10 installed. When I installed Mint, I could not reuse that key in a VM because it was “different hardware”. The license, could not be transferred under any circumstance. I had also purchased the upgrade to Pro through the windows store. That’s also lost.
I seldom run windows, even in the VM, but it still leaves one a bit bitter.
Usually calling Windows support, they’ll give you a key if you just tell them you replaced some piece of hardware due to failure, assuming you haven’t been transferring the same key around for awhile. They tend to be more invested in keeping you in the Windows ecosystem than they are are just getting one more license sold.
I reused a Win10 Pro key from a mini PC from 2015 onto a brand new build and it worked right away. Not sure what the difference is with your situation. Maybe it was your license type?
When I build a new PC, I could not transfer my old 7 pro retail license, even though it worked fine on my old PC running Windows 10 and it even said it was a digital license connected to my MS account.
So I bought a Win 10 pro key from one of the ebay resellers aber everything was fine… until it wasn’t. I updated the firmware for my mainboard and Windows took that for a replacement of hardware. Troubleshooter did not show three option “I recently changed my hardware” and did not give me the option to call Microsoft’s support.
Turns out it was a “one time install” key which was invalidated by changing the hardware. So it couldn’t activate a second time. And since the key seller was out of business at that time (they’ll change accounts every few months), I had no way of getting the key replaced.
Luckily, I still had an old Windows 7 COA with key and CD lying around from an old Dell business Workstation. That activated just fine.
But yeah, even if you have a valid license connected to your Microsoft account, there’s no way of seeing it in your account, and it’s not guaranteed MS will honor it.
Windows 10 links their license to the motherboard.
So as long as you use the same motherboard, the key will work.
This isn’t possible with VMs sadly.
You can extract the SLIC value from the ACPI table, and then pass it through to QEMU
See more details here: https://gist.github.com/Informatic/49bd034d43e054bd1d8d4fec38c305ec
It is my understanding that this can only be used to run the OEM license one one instance in a VM, on the specific hardware that is originally licensed. IE, you virtualize the license if the bootOS is Linux, but you can’t run 2 instances of the same windows license inside each other.
Cheap license sites (windows, games, etc) usually use keys bought via stolen credit cards. Pirating it is much better than buying from those sites, including for the devs that get punished for chargebacks from those keys.
Dumb q, if I install Linux and later decide to reinstall Windows, is that OEM license still good?
The answer is a resounding maybe. If you activated with a Microsoft account or if there’s a TPM chip, the chances of it still working increases. There are different kinds of licenses, but if it fails, there’s a better than not chance calling MS support and just telling them you had a hardware failure on your laptop and you need to reinstall, they’ll get you going. Not a guarantee though. And I’ll caveat and say this information is a couple years old (I don’t work in tech support anymore).
You can just reactivate by troubleshooting your activation in Windows.
No need to call Microsoft about it.
They cost like $5 online, it’s not like it’s a huge risk. I’ve bought OEM keys before and they work fine. Just use a credit card so you can easily get a refund if it’s fake.
I have around 30 windows 7 pro COAs (used to work in a pc repair shop, pulled the COAs on every dead pc that came through). Most of them are from dells, but I haven’t had an issue activating on custom pcs. If anyone wants one, let me know
If you’re handing out free keys, I’d happily take one! Pretty smart to yoink em from scrapped PCs lol
Can i get one? Upgraded my PC and windows wont accept my old code, been running without activation for a while lol
On 10 right now, but honestly have had enough of the whole Windows ecosystem. (Like today I ran across a look at these exciting Windows 11 September updates! woo! aren’t you excited! video, and it was almost all embarrassingly cosmetic. Except for the part where they’re finally adding native support for archive formats (.7z, .rar, .tar) that everyone else has supported for decades: how fucking charming am I supposed to find that announcement after all these years of using 3rd party apps, when the probability of the native support being buggy as hell is very high? And that was just one example; there’s a full list in the description box.
No thanks. It’s clear they did all this just to be able to simultaneously slather AI hooks all through the OS works, free for now but not forever, and I’m just not interested in that either. Nothing against AI, I just don’t want it integrated into my OS. I also like my privacy, believe in keeping my own shit on my own computers, and enjoy not having a significant portion of my hardware computing load dedicated to the collection and sale of my data.
But MS isn’t the only game in town anymore. I tried some hardware-light Linux distros on a 13 year old MacBook recently just to see what the fuss is about, and was gobsmacked at how well they ran with 4GB of RAM and a slow (by today’s standards) processor. Holy shit. So I did a bit of hardware upgrading so I could run even more, and yesterday I installed Fedora 38 with KDE Plasma on that same MacBook with 16GB of RAM and a 1T SSD. It picked up every bit of that hardware on its own, too; I didn’t have to configure a thing.
It’s almost too easy, lol. It’s Linux so I thought I was going to be overwhelmed with command line shit, but no, not at all: the few times I needed the command line, the exact syntax was a web search away, with plentiful discussion, documentation, and even demo videos to choose from.
And if I don’t like it, I can try as many as I like off USB drives until I see something I like and decide to install that instead, and there are literally dozens, if not hundreds of distros now.
So Microsoft can keep that AI-ridden ad-ware Windows 11 shit. I’ll keep 10 for now (installed on a 7 license, lol) until I’m fully comfortable with Linux, and then that’s that.
Put it this way. I now have a screaming fast machine that runs on 13-year-old hardware where every software I could want for it is free, open source, and backed by a gazillion gurus both pro and amateur for whom no question is too arcane; why the hell should I give that up for the baggy, bloated, slow, privacy-invasive advertising delivery service that is Microsoft Windows?
I know there will be issues with Linux as I get to know it and use it, just because there are issues with every OS. There may even be things I find I can’t get past, and if that happens I try other distros or suck it up, lol. But fuck MS if they think I am going to pay actual cash to help them serve up my privacy while they deliver unwanted ads to me every time I boot it up.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk, lol.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
