Windows 10: Product Key and virtual machine

I installed Windows 10 on VirtualBox on my Mac. When installing I entered the Product Key that I got when I purchased Windows 10. Now I am planning to use the same key elsewhere. Should I do something before I delete the virtual Windows 10 from VirtualBox? Thank you.

:)

 

Windows 10 activated with corrupt virtual machine

I installed a newly purchased retail version of Windows 10 Home (downloaded from MS) into an Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine and activated it. I did this about three days ago but the host laptop ran out of space and the virtual machine is now completely
corrupted and does not start.

When I create another virtual machine and install Windows 10 in it, it says that my product key has already been activated in another instance and cannot be used. As stated above, I am unable to run the first virtual machine in order to deactivate the product
key. How can I deactivate the product key so that I can use Windows 10?

Thanks.

Kurt

 

Upgraded virtual machine

Hi there

I found that this is not working. I installed my win 7 on a virtual machine and upgraded it to 10. I intended to extract the product key from the virtual machine to use for a clean install of my Dell. Win 10 did not activate with the extracted key and it
seemed that the product key was an generic key that every Virtual machine user was getting when they tried to extract the key.

I solved the upgrade problem with my Dell (connect main disk to SATA controller instead of RAID controller) and after the upgrade, my win 10 was activated

Thanks,

Jacob

 

Nothing that will really help. You can remove the product key from the local machine but that won't change anything already stored on Microsoft activation servers.

 

Thank you. How can I remove the product key from the local machine? Please note that it is installed on a VirtualBox as a VM. And does that help me to reuse it elsewhere?

 

If it is a retail key, you can reuse it. But you will have to call Microsoft.

 

It won't help you reuse it because it won't change what Microsoft has stored on their servers. I do not know if Microsoft changed their policy on reusing Windows 10 retail product keys but up through Windows 8.1 Microsoft allows a certain number of automatic internet activations of the same key and then it gets blocked from automatic internet activation and you have to use phone activation and tell the computer you have it installed on only one computer.

From an elevated ("run as administrator") command prompt type:

slmgr /cpky <enter>
slmgr /upk <enter>

The /cpky clears the product key from the registry and /upk uninstalls the product key (which deactivates the Windows installation).

 

Thank you very much.

 

Thank you. I will probably call them.

 

Please come back and tell us what they say.