[SOLVED] Windows 10 digital licenses

Feb 6, 2020
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Bit of a "noob" question but how exactly does the digital entitlement work?

My "old" rig--the iBUYPOWER that I swapped the cooler out in--had an OEM 8.1 Home license that I upgraded to Windows 10 and linked to my Microsoft account. Is this now the same as a regular digital license?
 
Solution
Its only the really big OEM holders (like Dell & lenovo) that have the licenses that restrict their reuse in other PC. Almost all PC converted from 7 & 8 to 10 can have the license themselves moved to another PC. It is one of the benefits of the upgrade.

there is very little difference between retail and OEM. Only one I could see is how many times it can be moved. retail is likely to let you move it more than once.

These days the Windows 10 license is tied to your MS account, not the PC, which makes it much more likely it will transfer to an upgrade(d) computer.

Not all. It really depends when Win 10 was installed as to if it is linked to an account or not. For a long time Microsoft didn't make it difficult to create a local...
Feb 6, 2020
99
10
45
Making a reply instead of editing because I actually have no reason to be disappointed. It seems that the world is just and iBP use full retail licenses:

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Feb 6, 2020
99
10
45
These days the Windows 10 license is tied to your MS account, not the PC, which makes it much more likely it will transfer to an upgrade(d) computer.
This case is a bit fuzzy as it's a preinstalled OS on a boutique prebuilt that I want to transfer to an all-new custom-built PC I'm putting together in a couple of months (thank the Lord that Ryzen is all three of fast, cheap and reliable!), so I was unsure if it would transfer.

Ran slmgr /dli in PowerShell and it said retail, but I wanted extra confirmation so I grabbed SKP from TenForums and it showed no indicators of it being an OEM key either.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Its only the really big OEM holders (like Dell & lenovo) that have the licenses that restrict their reuse in other PC. Almost all PC converted from 7 & 8 to 10 can have the license themselves moved to another PC. It is one of the benefits of the upgrade.

there is very little difference between retail and OEM. Only one I could see is how many times it can be moved. retail is likely to let you move it more than once.

These days the Windows 10 license is tied to your MS account, not the PC, which makes it much more likely it will transfer to an upgrade(d) computer.

Not all. It really depends when Win 10 was installed as to if it is linked to an account or not. For a long time Microsoft didn't make it difficult to create a local user on PC, at installation stage, and if you had swapped from 7 to 10, you may never have linked PC to your email address. My PC was like that until January last year when I last clean installed and mistakenly linked my MSA to licence.

So I can't tell you how many are still linked to hardware but it isn't none.
 
Solution