Windows 10: Questions regarding Win10 Digital License and Cloning

Hi folks,

I upgraded an 11-year old laptop to a new SSD just before Christmas and used the Win 7 key to activate the clean install of Win 10.

I'm putting in a bigger SSD and going to use Macrium Reflect to copy the Win 10 machine (so that all M$ Office and all of the other software won't have to be installed a second time and my WiFi printers will also be set up).

I understand that the easiest way to clone the existing drive is to put the new drive in the pc and put the old drive in a USB caddy and get the pc to boot from the external hard drive (the old one). That's correct isn't it?

Assuming that the BIOS of my 11-year old lappy allows me to boot from USB, that should be fine.

If it doesn't, I'd have to put the new drive in the external USB caddy ans use Macrium Reflect to clone from the internal SSD to the external (new) SSD.

If you then swap the drives over (so that the new one is now in the pc and the old drive is in the external caddy), there are a couple of additional steps to go through so that the new SSD will boot. That's correct isn't it?

I'll ask about those steps if I need to. Going to try the first method to start with.

Now to the Digital License question.

The new install of Win 10 just before Christmas 2020 used as I said before, the Windows 7 key and is activated. If I clone the SSD I presume that the license is simply carried over to the new SSD.

What happens if I decide to go for a clean install of Windows 10 in this new SSD. Will M$ pick up that apart from the larger SSD, the pc is the same (same processor, mobo & memory) and Win 10 will pick up the digital license?

I ask this because I had several (legitimate) copies of Windows 7 and I can't remember which licence key I used. Or could I use Belarc Advisor (or similar) to dig out the key?

Thanks in advance,

Art

PC in question is runing Windows 10 version 20H2, build 19042.867

:)

 

Activation options for Win10 with instant clones

We have a secure (no internet access) lab environment setup to test and validate a VMWare VDI deployment of Win10 clients.

Our issue is activation of the Win10 clients as they require re-activation every time we logoff and back on because we are using instant clones.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to resolve this? Here are the options we are considering and issues as we understand them:

• Setup a KMS server
  • Requires a Volume license, which is doable
  • Documentation says we must have a minimum of 25 hosts, we don' have that in our lab
• Use our MSDN account
  • No support for Win10 KMS license
  • No support for MKS activation
• Manually activate each time
  • Gonna spend a lot of time on the phone
  • Win10 has no grace period so machines are crippled w/o activation

Anyone have a thought or suggestions? I'm hoping I missed something.

Thanks

 

Digital license

Thats how licensing works with Windows 10, the digital license is attached to your Microsoft Account and makes it easy to reactivate Windows 10 in the event you reinstall it.

Learn more:

• Use a Digital
  License to Manage and Activate Windows 10

 

Digital license bind question

Because you refer to a digitally licensed laptop in your first sentence which apparently isn't involved in the swap between two other PC's discussed in the next sentence?

I've amended my suggestions above.

Feel free to ask back any questions and let us know how it goes.