Windows 10 licensing

[Aspman]

Just some info I've discovered in my current trials with MS.

 

I upgraded to Win10 a few months back, I quite like it no issues really.

 

I wanted to switch to an SSD now they're getting cheap. Stick in disk, run Win10 ISO, shove in product key extracted from previous install.

(I should say my previous build was a legit Win7 OEM. Nothing dodgy)

 

Windows Activation says get to hell, and won't authenticate.

 

Now turns out (I already knew part of this) that when you do an upgrade to to Win10 you don't get a unique licence key. They're all the same. Instead Windows uses your hardware to generate a code for your PC. It then store the code as the license.

 

Now should you change your hardware this code changes and you can struggle to authenticate. This is where I am now. There are work arounds but all miserable and long winded.

 

To the point...

 

If you have upgraded from an OEM copy of Win7 or 8 Microsoft considers the license to be tied to the hardware, particularly the motherboard.

Should you upgrade your PC with a new motherboard your upgraded copy of Windows 10 will no longer be valid and you will have to buy a new license.

 

This was also the case with Win7 but MS rarely blocked the authentication in teh way they seem to be doing now.

 

It also appears that you'll go through a world of pain should you change your hard disk.

 

Right now I think I'll have to switch back to the old hard disk until I figure out a work around. The new SSD is useless for now since my laptop will have the same issues.

 

So nice work by MS, their authentication mechanism forces paying user to switch back to Win7 or use pirate software to use what they've paid for. Again nice work.

 

This doesn't apply to retail copies btw.

 

Now where is that mint linux install.....

Edited 21 September, 2015 by Aspman

[gac]

So nice work by MS, their authentication mechanism forces paying user to switch back to Win7 or use pirate software to use what they've paid for. Again nice work.

 

While I agree in theory, I'm going to play devil's advocate and point out that you paid for Windows 7 and they're not stopping you from using that. When you paid for Windows 7 (or bought a laptop like mine with an OEM 7 license that I upgraded to 10) there was no indication that Windows 10 would be free, so I think (in my opinion) that you're wrong for feeling entitled to it. Frankly I think it was already pretty generous that they were offering free upgrades to an OS that was 2 generations old (3 if you count 8 and 8.1 as separate OSes, personally I don't) so to have certain terms and conditions attached to it kind of seems fair...it's frustrating that a hard drive change would do that given that they're pretty much the part in a PC which is most likely to die with no advance warning, but I get it.

 

Also, when I did a clean installation onto my desktop (which was an upgrade from 8.1) I didn't put a product key anywhere in the installation - out of interest (and having nothing to lose) have you tried just skipping past the key prompts and seeing if that changes any behaviour? I haven't put a new drive in my PC to see if it still works (just did a clean install of 10 after upgrading to it) but maybe actually entering the key you extracted was the wrong thing to do in this situation and you'd have been better to see if the hardware hash of your machine was enough on its own. Kind of seems like you've got nothing to lose at this point anyway.

[langers2k]

Have you tried giving them a ring and explaining you've swapped hard drives? They've always been alright with me when I've called.

 

Alternatively, as you're doing a clean install, you can throw win7 on the SSD then upgrade that to win10 to get another licence?

[Aspman]

Also, when I did a clean installation onto my desktop (which was an upgrade from 8.1) I didn't put a product key anywhere in the installation - out of interest (and having nothing to lose) have you tried just skipping past the key prompts and seeing if that changes any behaviour? I haven't put a new drive in my PC to see if it still works (just did a clean install of 10 after upgrading to it) but maybe actually entering the key you extracted was the wrong thing to do in this situation and you'd have been better to see if the hardware hash of your machine was enough on its own. Kind of seems like you've got nothing to lose at this point anyway.

 

If it was no worse than the Win7/XP reactiviation I really would't complain but I've been through the phone activiation (failed) and the Support desk (useless)

 

You might well be right with your suggestion, a little knowledge might have cost me dear here. I have since removed the key form the machine but it could well be too late. MS own suggesttions are to resinstall Win7 then upgrade again. An alternative suggested is to partition the drive, Install Win7 on the partition, upgrade it and activiate then deleted the new partition and the older (new) Win10 activiation should then kick in since the hardware hash will match.

 

Frustrating that the technological might of MS hasn't spotted that to fix a hardware fault on an upgraded machine could result in having to install two operating systems to get going again. It's the inelegance and lack of foresight that is galling.

[fabdavrav]

I was thinking about going over to win10 but considering I know the weak point in my PC is the slow (3GBs) OS harddrive from my older computer which has win7 Ultimate on it..........................So I would have to swap to the newer HD before attempting to upgrade to win10.............

[gac]

Frustrating that the technological might of MS hasn't spotted that to fix a hardware fault on an upgraded machine could result in having to install two operating systems to get going again. It's the inelegance and lack of foresight that is galling.

You're assuming it's not deliberate - it could be a concious decision to give you Windows 10 for free on your machine, with the hope that you like it, and then if the hardware fails it'll be good enough to get you to buy a retail copy...I must admit, reinstalling Windows 7 and then upgrading again on your new hardware hadn't occurred to me, but I bet that would work just by registering your machines new hardware with the MS activation servers, leaving you to do a clean install of 10 (without a key!) and just picking up that activation. On the plus side, you'll be installing onto a nice new SSD, I bet you can do Win7+Win10upgrade+Win10 clean dead quick

[Aspman]

I was thinking about going over to win10 but considering I know the weak point in my PC is the slow (3GBs) OS harddrive from my older computer which has win7 Ultimate on it..........................So I would have to swap to the newer HD before attempting to upgrade to win10.............

 

Yes I'd suggest doing that.

 

You're assuming it's not deliberate - it could be a concious decision to give you Windows 10 for free on your machine, with the hope that you like it, and then if the hardware fails it'll be good enough to get you to buy a retail copy...I must admit, reinstalling Windows 7 and then upgrading again on your new hardware hadn't occurred to me, but I bet that would work just by registering your machines new hardware with the MS activation servers, leaving you to do a clean install of 10 (without a key!) and just picking up that activation. On the plus side, you'll be installing onto a nice new SSD, I bet you can do Win7+Win10upgrade+Win10 clean dead quick

 

A cack handed way of doing things but yeah it could well be right. MS has bought into the Apple way of thinking and seem to think that I'm going to be sentamentally attached to my OS and I'll do anything to keep it. but I'm not.

 

I'm irritated enought now to think about trying Linux+WINE again first. I have Mint on an old laptop and I quite like that.

 

I still have the full install of Win10 on the 1Tb drive to go back to.

Edited 21 September, 2015 by Aspman

[gac]

I was thinking about going over to win10 but considering I know the weak point in my PC is the slow (3GBs) OS harddrive from my older computer which has win7 Ultimate on it..........................So I would have to swap to the newer HD before attempting to upgrade to win10.............

I'm assuming you mean 3GB/s as in speed, not 3GBs as in size; in which case I wouldn't worry about it too much personally. Even some of the newest, fastest SSDs can't actually saturate the throughput of SATA so moving from 3GB/s to 6GB/s is just a headline figure...

 

As for Linux, Mint isn't too bad, I'm tempted to give it a try again too as my work PC is broken again (I can't uninstall any MSIs, which means I can't upgrade most of my software because step 1 has to be uninstalling the old version) and I don't have a Windows 10 license for it yet due to MS dragging their heels over my partner membership...

[fabdavrav]

I'm assuming you mean 3GB/s as in speed, not 3GBs as in size; in which case I wouldn't worry about it too much personally. Even some of the newest, fastest SSDs can't actually saturate the throughput of SATA so moving from 3GB/s to 6GB/s is just a headline figure...

 

 Yep speed not size.......................

 

 

 

 

if I could get win7 OS to run on a 3gb size file MS would own me ££££££..........................

[DoktorLorenz]

I'm assuming you mean 3GB/s as in speed, not 3GBs as in size; in which case I wouldn't worry about it too much personally. Even some of the newest, fastest SSDs can't actually saturate the throughput of SATA so moving from 3GB/s to 6GB/s is just a headline figure....

I hate to be a bore on only my 3rd ever post but actually SATA is 6Gb (gigabits) not 6GB (gigabytes) which the absolute maximum is 768MB/s or 0.75GB/s and it's not uncommon for get SSD's which can reach a maximum of 500-550MB/s transfer speeds.

Edited 21 September, 2015 by DoktorLorenz

[gac]

I hate to be a bore on only my 3rd ever post but actually SATA is 6Gb (gigabits) not 6GB (gigabytes) which the absolute maximum is 768MB/s or 0.75GB/s and it's not uncommon for get SSD's which can reach a maximum of 500-550MB/s transfer speeds.

 

Oops, good catch, I mentally converted that wrong having read the upper case B and stand corrected. Also, the maximum throughput isn't 6Gb/s anyway, by the time you've removed the encoding overhead it's 4.8Gb/s (or 600Mb/s), which you're right, a good SSD could probably just about make use of. I've seen drives rated for 500Mb/s, but I don't think I've ever seen a SATA drive benchmark at that...yet.

Edited 21 September, 2015 by gac

[@Lee]

await$ the fluffy eared one$ re$pon$es. I bet he know$ of a few way$ to $orth thi$ out. $au$age$.

[fabdavrav]

I hate to be a bore on only my 3rd ever post but actually SATA is 6Gb (gigabits) not 6GB (gigabytes) which the absolute maximum is 768MB/s or 0.75GB/s and it's not uncommon for get SSD's which can reach a maximum of 500-550MB/s transfer speeds.

 

My fault as I stated 3gbs as sometimes I drop the caps as I presume that when you are talking about transfer speed & sata that you will know what I mean!

 

To be exact my slow drive is SATA II & 3Gb/s.....................

 

my fast drive is SATA III & 6Gb/s..................

 

both onto a SATA III sockets on the mobo.............

[Aspman]

Started from scratch again. Formatted the ssd.

Put on the bare minimum of win 7 to get it to activate.

Ran the win 10 disc I'd created previously.

This time it activated within seconds.

Luckily I'd backed up steam so that saved an 11Gb download. Just the mods to sort out and some more stuff to get installed. Office etc which (fingers crossed) should be easy being legit.

PITA but it is so very fast now even with a budget i3

Edited 21 September, 2015 by Aspman

[GentleGiant]

Last time I had an OEM re-licence fail I told the M$ people I had the OS HDD fail and replaced it, they gave me a manual code to enter and the licence went through fine.

 

Tried the same approach when a mobo failed and they told me to bugger off - which was a bit ripe as the mobo HAD failed - and I had even replaced with the same board - just a newer version number with a slightly different USB port layout; so I switched to Tiny7.

 

Strangely, earlier this year, after rebuilding the PC with new everything except the mobo, I tried the old licence again and it worked perfectly. Go figure!!

[DoktorLorenz]

My fault as I stated 3gbs as sometimes I drop the caps as I presume that when you are talking about transfer speed & sata that you will know what I mean!

 

To be exact my slow drive is SATA II & 3Gb/s.....................

 

my fast drive is SATA III & 6Gb/s..................

 

both onto a SATA III sockets on the mobo.............

 

Hey life used to be so simple when computing was just kilobytes & megabytes no gigabyte ot terabytes, now we gotta deal with megabits, gigabits as well pffftt

[Aspman]

I've read in a few places that MS consider any OEM licence to be tied to the mobo. In theory you can replace everything else but not that (CPU bit debatable).

[Aspman]

Hey life used to be so simple when computing was just kilobytes & megabytes no gigabyte ot terabytes, now we gotta deal with megabits, gigabits as well pffftt

We're already onto petabytes at work and big companies are looking at zettabytes

[DoktorLorenz]

Oops, good catch, I mentally converted that wrong having read the upper case B and stand corrected. Also, the maximum throughput isn't 6Gb/s anyway, by the time you've removed the encoding overhead it's 4.8Gb/s (or 600Mb/s), which you're right, a good SSD could probably just about make use of. I've seen drives rated for 500Mb/s, but I don't think I've ever seen a SATA drive benchmark at that...yet.

 

Well I cant actually get a good measure right now using Samsung Magician as for some reason its/or windows 10 is using the ram cache so i'm getting reading of seq reads 3721 MB/s and seq writes as 3542 MB/s which i know to not be true as its rated to 540Mb read and 520Mb writes. I do know that using them on a Sata II connection i used to get 240-260MB/s and then when i built the i7 and swapped it to a Sata III port it was reporting around 500-520. I think the IOPS are being correctly reported but until i cant find a way to force it to switch of cache i'll leave it as its working just nicely lol.

[VWD]

It seems a bit of a lottery. I decided that i'd want to try out W10 ,but keep W7, so I made an extra partition on my HDD,and installed a fresh copy of W7, then upgraded to W10.First copy of W7 authenticated ok, as did second, then both failed after installing W10. So as an experiment, I formatted a spare HDD, installed W7 and upgraded to W10. tHAT ONE AUTHENTICATED ok. Back to original HDD, i've now authenticated W7 ( on the old HDD),but I'm getting problems on W10, possibly now due to my T  MOBILE dongle insisting that I'm over the fair play limit.

[Aspman]

Might just be the authentication servers not getting back to you. When Win10 first came out they were taking 2-3 days to authenticate new upgrades.

 

I'm past my grump now and everything seems to be working ok (not tried skyrim yet I've still to sort the mods). I still think it's stupid you have to do a double install with a valid key onto valid OEM hardware.

 

At least developers have come on a bit and have made it easy to work with a boot drive + slower storage. I split my Tb drive so I still have all my old data if needed, whe I'm happy everything is working I'll flush out that partition as well.  I've had no issues installing across the two drives. Nice to have an SSD again. It makes a massive difference to basic tasks on the machine.

Edited 24 September, 2015 by Aspman