Windows 10: Purchasing Windows OEM keys

I own a small consulting company where I provide IT support for small businesses. I have a customer that wants me to upgrade about 30 workstations, motherboard, processor, ram and hard drives so that the systems can run Windows 11. I purchased an OEM Windows 11 DVD from Newegg and after upgrading the first workstation, I attempted to install Windows 11 from the DVD. When I entered the Product Key, I got a message that the key was invalid. After trying several different methods, slmgr /ipk installing without the key and adding the key once it was online, I called Microsoft activation support. T

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Question On OEM Windows clean install......

"Flavors" of Windows licenses

Windows can be a little "odd" about license keys. There are at least 4 categories:

• Retail
• OEM
• Volume (electronic download)
• Corporate (no key needed)

For guaranteed success, the license key and media should be in the same category. If you have retail media, you may not be able to install it using an OEM or Volume license key, even though the key is valid for that version of Windows. *Wtf :wtf: Apparently, this is part of Microsoft's anti-piracy scheme (i.e., all customers are guilty until proven innocent).

 

Windows 7 OEM key

Hope this is not against the rules. If you do a clean install of Windows 10, it may, (has for me) accept a Win 7 OEM key and activate.

 

Question On OEM Windows clean install......

Yea, I got that part, was just wondering if the OEM disk/key part was broken down into further catergories, like vendor specific - DELL, HP, etc. ?

What about service packs? I have a retail XP SP1 disk. I recall seeing a way to make a new disk with all the latest SP's. Sorry, rambling off topic here...