Windows 10: Activating Win 10S

I installed Win 10S on a pc for use by an elderly relative to minimise click mania impact, and was shocked licence was £220. I had a spare PRO digital licence from an old upgrade I was not using but have long lost original key.

Other users here have said that Win 10S will activate if hardware has a PRO digital licence, although I have never done it.

So as an experiment, I tried to see if I could transfer PRO licence using activation troubleshooter, but it came up with an error message that Win10S does not support the digital licence transfer feature!

So I then tried to install PRO as a dual boot option, on pc and sucessfully transferred digital licence to new PRO. Then I rebooted into Win 10S, and flabber my gast, it was now activated.

So there is a back door way round the Win 10S restriction above which is handy to know.

So then I deleted PRO and boot entry, then tidied up partitions, and I now have an activated version of Win 10S.

I know I could have just probably just installed PRO and given relative a standard account etc, and restricted it to just running uwp apps, but I wanted to be sure it was locked down fully.

BTW - it makes absolutely no sense to buy a Win10S licence when a PRO licence is same cost (at full price), as there is an additional £50 premium to upgrade 10S to PRO!

:)

 

Windows 10 product key activation error code: 0xc004f050

Dan's answer is correct. Win 7 keys will not work with win 10 media

you have to first upgrade an activated qualifying product like win 7 the upgraded win 10 will then be automatically activsted and the MS activation servers will register that your hardware had had win 10 activated on it, you can then if you want

do a clean install of win 10 and your activation will be successful as the activation servers already know that win 10 had been previously successful activated on that hardware.

 

After clean installation windows won't activate... error 0xC004C003

I DID EXACTLY WHAT U SAID AND TILL NOW WIN 10 IS NOT ACTIVATED. I upgraded from Win 7 Pro to Win 10 Pro through the activation tool. After installation Win 10 pro was installed and activated. Then I downloaded the USB ver of Win 10, did a clean Install,
BUT WIN 10 IN NOT ACTIVATED. MS rep told me to wait 24-48 hours , not it have been 5 days . MY BAD MICROSOFT TO TRY YOUR **** 10 I WOULD STICK TO WIN 7 BUT 2 LATE

 

So the digital license of which was a footprint of another PC transferred to the PC you set up, which, of course, has a different footprint. That in turn allowed the 10s to activate since it has that footprint. Therefore, the activation server keeps track with a match of footprint with digital license. It could care less what the OS is as long as it's an equal or lesser "grade" OS. Interesting workaround indeed.

 

Not exactly - it only works for PRO and 10S as 10S is essentially a limited form of PRO.

 

First time I clean installed 10 S I got no prompt for a key and it activated automatically. I do believe at that time it was a separate ISO all by itself on MSDN. The assumption was it activated with the Pro DL that that PC already had. I played with it for a bit and found it too restrictive for my tastes. I upgraded to full Pro via change product key and entering the generic pro key. It upgraded and activated OK.

I would think you could clean install Pro, with your legal key, and activate etc. Then clean install 10 S on the same hardware and it should activate. And you would then have the option to upgrade back to Pro with a simple key change.