Question Changing an OEM licence to a retail one

[AlexCranswick]

I have a 7 year old computer with an OEM Windows 10 licence. It was built on a standard offering by a small business but I had various changes specified and added several items when it arrived. I am now proposing to change the motherboard and CPU, but would like to avoid a reinstall of the OS as I have done that a couple of times and it is a pain getting all my apps reinstalled.

The provisional plan is to change the motherboard and then reboot using the existing drives and OS (C drive is an SSD). and then once everything has bedded down to upgrade to Windows 11.

I need to change my licence from OEM to retail. According to numerous forums that is quite straight forward. After a whole morning of searching I can not find a "trusted" source of genuine Windows 10 Home retail licence. I can find a Windows 11 Home retail, but there seem to be differing opinions as to whether this would activate with Windows 10. Another thread on this forum had problems with a clash between Pro and Home on reactivating, but that is slightly different. Although MS suggests retail licences can be purchased from its store, I have been unable to find any either via the store, my MS account and the activation route under Settings only gives upgrades.

So anyone know of a source of genuine MS Windows 10 Home retail licence or whether Windows 11 Home retail would activate a windows 10 installation? The final solution is just a clean install of Windows 11 and it may have to that, but I would like to try the other route.

 

[DSzymborski]

The fundamental issue you're facing is that slapping an old OS install on a new platform is absolutely *not* best practice. Windows 10 does its best when people cut corners, a lot more effectively than older versions, but it is *not* designed to be modular in this way except for very specific Windows-to-Go installs. It may work, but it may not, and possibly even worse, it very well might look like it's working and you're chasing vague problems and performance issues for the next year. I have seven PCs in my house/home office and they're always doing something, and I will do 100% fresh install of Windows all the time because it pays to be prepared so you can do things correctly; a lot of problems will require a clean install to repair.

A Windows reinstallation is always something that is a possibility, so people need to be prepared for it. Since your PC at least still works, you have time to organize things. Things like Steam games don't need to be reinstalled; you just have to assemble your install files for your applications in a central location. I have a flash drive I keep with the install files of about 95 applications that I use for very things on different PCs and it's really only a few hours to get things going on any one PC after a fresh install.

 

[AlexCranswick]

Many thanks - a clean install it is. I do have a central log of all my apps and keys and all app and user data is independent of the OS drive, all backed up twice daily to a NAS raid. So I don't need to worry about data backup, just the app installs and a clean install does have its benefits. Just need to read up on how to do an install from scratch on a "new" PC!

 

[DSzymborski]

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

Trust me, you'll be happy over the long haul going for the ounce of prevention rather than a pound of cure! I do radio and the occasional TV spot from home and I need to file articles and have access to working computers or I literally can't do my job (my current employer doesn't even *keep* a physical office and my last one was about a thousand miles away from where I live). Best practices are there for a reason and make sure I have as little surprise downtime as possible.

I am always happy to hear someone is taking data backups seriously. We have too many people who show up here with failing or dead hard drives suddenly asking how to back up or recover their data, and it sucks to tell them that the right time to be prudent was any time before this.

 

[AlexCranswick]

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

Trust me, you'll be happy over the long haul going for the ounce of prevention rather than a pound of cure! I do radio and the occasional TV spot from home and I need to file articles and have access to working computers or I literally can't do my job (my current employer doesn't even *keep* a physical office and my last one was about a thousand miles away from where I live). Best practices are there for a reason and make sure I have as little surprise downtime as possible.

I am always happy to hear someone is taking data backups seriously. We have too many people who show up here with failing or dead hard drives suddenly asking how to back up or recover their data, and it sucks to tell them that the right time to be prudent was any time before this.

 

[AlexCranswick]

Thanks for the tutorial link. I've just created my Windows 11 boot USB and am scanning the Apps list to make sure I have everything covered off. On backups, my wife is an author and cruise lecturer and has been very thankful for a backup strategy, since she is prone to "loosing" manuscripts and presentations. Her OneDrive even gets backed up.

 

[Colif]

did they change licence? clean install only really helps because they are using new hardware, but it won't change status of the licence. What OEM was it? If a big one like Dell & Lenovo, they have special OEM licences that only work on their hardware.

Will need to buy a new one to get it on new PC.

 

[AlexCranswick]

I am buying a new licence.