Transferring Ownership of Windows 10?

[jhirjak]

I recently bought a pre-built pc, and it comes with a copy of windows 10 on it. I am giving my current pc, that has windows 10 to my brother.

I am wondering how to give him his own fresh copy of windows, so he is not registered under my Microsoft account.

The new computer that I just bought has a 32Gb M.2 ssd installed. I was planning on giving the 32 gb ssd to my brother, and I would take the 500gb ssd out of my current computer.

I was first going to install windows on the 32gb ssd under my Microsoft account, that way my Microsoft account is linked to that computer for warranty and support purposes. Then I would pull out the 32gb ssd and put it in my current computer, and swap it with the 500gb ssd and put it in my new computer.

However, if I do this, my brother would have windows 10 under MY Microsoft account, not his own. I think i'm overthinking this whole process, but do you guys know the best way about making sure we have our own separate Microsoft accounts when flip flopping hardware like this? Can I "transfer ownership" of windows 10?

 

[canadianvice]

Win10 isn't that rigid for ownership.



Just factory reset the PC you are giving to your brother. You Windows key is not actually tied to a microsoft account - you just have to make sure you don't have too many activations on it (and if you're resetting the same system, this is implicitly fine) and that you have the key lying around somewhere to type in when you're reinstalling Windows 10.

You probably don't even need to do that if you just go into start and type "Reset this PC". As always, back up your data.

Once you have the system reset, when creating the user accounts, just let your brother create one with his credentials.