Changing Motherboards - Windows 10 licensing questions

thedoc46 · 26 Feb 2017 at 14:59

So i have 3 computers. 2 for my boys and my own.

All three machines previously had retail Win7 licenses, and we all took our free copies of Win10 when it came out.

However i want to upgrade my motherboard to accomodate a new cpu, gpu and memory.... I'm fairly sure Windows 10 is going to see this as a new computer.

I'll be giving my existing motherboard, CPU, GPU and memory to my son, and hopefully selling his current Z77, 8gb i7 2600k.

Will i be ok in terms of licensing ? Being my mobo has already seen an activation against my Microsoft account..... Likewise, my new mobo will not have seen and not be known to Microsoft... Also My son's Win10 license. Will he be able to transfer that across to his new (which is my old mobo)

and finally can we sell his old Asus Z77 mobo, i7 2600k and all that to go towards the new hardware?

We're all on anniversary edition 1607 and all have Microsoft accounts that we login with.

This howtogeek link says you can but then goes on to say you can't at the bottom... Anyway surely no better place than here for real world experiences on whether this worked like a charm, or you were left with having to buy another lic !

hyperseven · 26 Feb 2017 at 15:10

Should be ok just go through the automatic activation, think I used the authenticator app on my phone last time.

ozzyo99 · 27 Feb 2017 at 11:11

It's a good question, with Windows 10 the license is paired with your MS Account (the one you sign in with) which is important for those using Bitlocker and so on, that's where your recovery key gets saved by default.

You should be able to swap the parts over without worrying of your hardware hash/ID modifying as a result of the changes - used to be 3 parts but I don't think it's too relevant in W10 land.

thedoc46 · 27 Feb 2017 at 11:54

So with that being said, if i took the 'free' upgrade on a couple of older laptops which were OEM Win7 lics originally, and are being shown as in my list of hardware against my account. Then i have plenty of Win10 lics at my disposal ? All i would need to do is remove one of those devices and that should effectively free up a win 10 lic ? I could then just de-commision, (or put an older ver of Win back on one of those laptops), and keep the win10 license for a new gaming rig that would have a new mobo, right?