I've just received a replacement motherboard for a faulty one - it's exactly the same make and model - should I reinstall Windows or is there no need as it's an identical replacement? Cheers GK
In the past (win 7), I've found that even chipsets within the same family will happily work. If you took Microsoft up on a free win 10 upgrade offer, just make sure you record your existing key with jellybean keyfinder to make reactivation smooth.
Why? All the upgraded OSs use a generic key which doesn't activate. Just keep a hold of your old 7 or 8 key as that will just reactivate a Windows 10 install anyway. /off topic
As above, not an issue at all. I changed motherboard and just put in my Win 7 key, and activation was done 30 seconds later.
I changed from a 6700 and Z170 board to a 7600K and Z270 and Windows literally didn't even grumble... And I used an OEM key. I think they make it up as they go along tbh.
A couple of months ago I swapped motherboard and CPU, identical RMA replacements and Windows 10 carried on as if nothing happened.
Yep, with Win 10 either you have a Microsoft account (in which case you can chop and change everything without issue, it will still activate) of if not the activation will be against a hardware Id hash. Changing just the motherboard (or a combination of a few components) will just activate automatically as normal, if you change too many you just do the same old phone activation route as with previous versions. If you have an actual OEM copy (i.e. on an actual pre-built machine) or tried to do the dodgy buy-a-cheap-er-OEM-key-but-I'm-not-actually-an-OEM thing many did with Windows 7, that's when you could end up with activation problems. Usually the phone activation route will work just fine here too, same as previous versions.
I know with Dell/Alienware the serial is in the board itself and you can not view it. My Area 51 originally shipped with 8.1 and included an install DVD if you wanted to reinstall. However, about a year into Win 10 I was getting sick of having to keep reinstalling because I had broken versions that would not update and tried to go back to 8.1. I had installed 8.1 twice before that point, yet this time it was asking for a serial number. Of course Alienware did not give me one (fnarr). I did some Googling and found out a couple of things. Firstly the key is stored in the bios as I already said. Secondly if you used 10 for a certain amount of time (it was either 30 or 90 days) it then deactivated your 8.1 serial and you could no longer install it you had to use 10. Sure as eggs downloaded Windows 10 and it went straight on and activated with no serial or anything else. From what I read it depends on your PC/version of Windows. If it's an OEM build you will never get a serial of any sort. It's not on the machine, it's not in the welcome pack and Dell won't give you one (again fnarr). So in that case if I ever replace my motherboard I also have to buy a new Windows key, because mine is tied to the board itself. If you have a physical key you can always do the phone activation thing to move that key onto your new board/PC etc.
That is the case with any Windows OEM key, and always has been: the key is tied to the hardware, and not 'portable' like a retail key. It was enforced more laxly in previous versions to people got used to abusing it.
Nah mate, don't be buying a new key. The one in your BIOS is easily extracted. It's kept in the ACPI tables, the MSDN bit to be precise. Use this to extract it (tick the MSDN box when you run it).
I was going to say that... I've extracted the key from laptops before as they were downgraded to 7 and I didn't want to risk losing the 8.1 keys.
Probably because the link redirects to a direct download link of a zip file containing an .exe. It's the sort of thing an AV, especially running as a browser extension, will be wary of.
It is a legit piece of software so as above its a false positive based on it simply looking like a potential threat.
If you don't trust the link you can do it manually with a VBS script instead: 1: Open Notepad 2: Copy Paste the following into it: 3: Go to save as 4: Change from .txt to all 5: Save as whatever_you_want_to_call_it.vbs 6: Double click and a window pops up displaying you the decrypted Windows 10 Product Key.
That doesn't work with 10, it just extracts the default key that all 10 installations use. For any computer with a key in BIOS it needs to be extracted from the ACPI tables, the default key does nothing.
Having just upgraded the motherboard (from Z77 to Z170), CPU (3570K to 6700K) and RAM (to DDR4) the Windows 10 install didn't throw a single wobble. It booted up, self installed LAN drivers and everything else then reboot and voila literally everything the same. Was well impressed ^^. Sent from my SM-N915FY using Tapatalk