How tied to your hardware is WIndows 10 upgrade?

I haven't been able to find a clear answer on these questions I have for Windows 10 upgrade so hopefully those of you here can help, and much appreciated.

How tied to your hardware is the Windows 10 upgrade? My main gaming rig is Windows 8.1. I didn't want to do an in-place upgrade and have a risk of causing issues with my Win 8.1 install, but a clean install on another hard drive to claim my free Windows 10 in case I'm forced to go with Windows 10 for any number of reasons (i.e. DirectX12 only titles comes to mind). But then go back to Windows 8.1 until I feel I need/want to go to Windows 10 because I really don't want to have to pay for Win 10 if I don't have to.

So if/when I go to Windows 10, it won't balk and say it was installed on another hard drive, or even have installed a new video card, you can't use this machine with this key.

Once the free upgrade period ends, do you still have that Windows 10 key indefinitely or do you have to have it installed by the end of the free trial and lose your key for Win 8.1 since it will now be a Win 10 key?

I also have a half dozen Win 7 Pro keys. I may use one to do a clean Windows 10 install on my gaming rig and that way I already have a Windows 10 key. That may be the best bet. But if it's real picky about the hardware then it may be a moot point.

 

My understanding is it is tied to the motherboard. There is a hardware hash key, or something like that, that is generated to create a unique system id that identifies your computer as being Windows 10 activated. The Windows 10 key is yours forever on that machine.

I am not sure though if changing something as significant as the CPU will be enough to change the activation hash and trigger a validation issue?

 

Microsoft hasn't been forthcoming at all about how the key is generated for the entitlement. A good guess is the motherboard but really they could be taking a sum of all the parts in the system too. I can tell you this though - Sager replaced my motherboard and my digital entitlement is still there (I sent them in a clean windows 10 install with monitoring tools and my RMA notes popping up as soon as the machine is turned on and it came back to me the same way but I can confirm it is indeed a new motherboard) so it may be a hash that was generated by the other parts of the system as well and since the processor, memory, graphics, and drives were the same didn't invalidate the entitlement? It's really anyone's guess.

The only thing Microsoft has been forthcoming on is that your old product key is not tied to Windows 10 and is still valid to activate your old product should you choose to stop using Windows 10 and remove it from machine in favor of your old OS.

 

We cloned a Windows 10 computer at work with the intent of restoring the image to other computers in our organization so we wouldn't have to go through the manual upgrade process on each machine. Each machine that we intended to restore the image to is 100% identical to the original machine. (We ordered like 50+ at once) The first machine we restored the image to stated that it was not activated and the license was invalid. That's why I figured it had to do with the mainboard hash, or something like that.

The original machine was upgraded to 10 via the free upgrade, thus why we thought it would work.

 

Yeah and complicating matters is the fact that Sager replaced both video cards as well as the motherboard. I know it's a new motherboard because it isn't a Sager board, it's a Clevo board (Sager never added the TPM 1.2 module to their orders from Clevo and I was very happy to discover that this board has TPM, not to mention they couldn't have fixed the defective audio jack without replacing the motherboard).

I doubt Sager would have gone through the hassle of reactivating the OS over the phone so unless the hash is made using random parts in the machine I have no idea. It's obvious Microsoft wants to keep it secret. I haven't checked the motherboard to see if Sager restored my 8.1 Pro license to the UEFI. If Windows 10 is looking for the license, wouldn't it be different on each machine? I'll grab the key revealer later today and see if they restored my key and report back.

 

Are you saying you finally got your laptop back ??

 

Indeed. Everything is fixed this time. New motherboard, new GPUs, new keyboard, new TouchPad, new case, new fans. It literally looks brand new.

 

It's more likely to be a hash based on the motherboard serial number (possibly plus some other hardware identifiers), so I wouldn't have expected this to work.


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I just checked and Sager did indeed restore my product key for 8.1 to UEFI (checked with RW Everything) - I know its my same key because I've pulled that key before and the last 5 characters are what I remember them to be. Its possible that my motherboard being switched out didn't even register with Microsoft because that UEFI key is there. After all, its the same motherboard model, just a replacement.