On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 1:01 AM Wols Lists <antli...@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
> On 06/01/20 19:55, Michael Jones wrote: > > > > As for windows 10 licensing, don't trust me on this blindly, but your > > license should be tied to the hardware fingerprint of the laptop. So > > even installing windows fresh on your new SSD should result in Windows > > activating automatically. In fact, you might want to take this > > opportunity to try that out, to get a completely fresh installation > > without the decade of old cruft built up by window's lack of a package > > manager. > > Two points with this - firstly if (like me) you DON'T have an MS > account, this fingerprint is not stored anywhere so that won't work. > Secondly, the fingerprint is likely stored on the hard drive somewhere > so if you clone the hard drive you are hopefully good, and thirdly it's > possible that the new hard drive will break the fingerprint so you're > SOL whatever you do. However, in that last case, if you ring the > licencing help line they MAY give you a new code because it is, still, > technically the same laptop. > > Cheers, > Wol > > I don't mean to continue the windows discussion on the gentoo list, but I wanted to point out that this is incorrect I don't have a microsoft account at all, and regularly reactivate Windows 10 Home / Pro using the hardware fingerprint method using completely clean installations on factory-new harddrives with existing hardware. The fingerprint is stored on Microsoft's activation servers somewhere. I don't know how it works beyond that it's not required that you have a Microsoft account to use it.
