Windows 10: Windows Activated without a key being entered

If its activated with a Digital License and it is in fact 10 Home, I'd just leave it. The Home DL is a different DL from the Pro one it had. One is not tied to the other. All my PC's have multiple Digital Licenses for Home Pro and Education. I can switch back and forth between the three with no repercussions. I don't think you can deactivate it? You can strip the product key out but the DL will stay tied to that hardware. As far as I know anyway.

 

How do you deactivate a digital license on a piece of hardware that's registered its hardware hash on the microsoft windows 10 activation servers - I'd really like to know the method.

You can pass it on with no OS, but in the future someone will try to load windows 10 on it, then it will be the same as you leaving 10 on it now.

 

Exactly, I don't think you can. The best you could do is a transfer to a new device.

 

And they can just do a clean install of either Windows 10 Home or Pro and it will activate itself with the digital license stored on MS Activation Servers, so what's the point?

 

So that seems to make a mockery of the whole licencing model then....?

 

You installed Windows 10 Pro on this laptop using your own retail Windows 7 Pro key. This was a legitimate upgrade.
But what was on the PC when you got it? Did it come with Win7 Home pre-installed, or maybe even Windows 8/8.1 Home? Especially if it was supplied with Windows 8/8.1 there would be a key built into the hardware. Although officially ended, the free upgrade still seems to be operational. The activation of Windows 10 Home could well be based on a Windows 8 key from the hardware, which is (until MS stop allowing upgrades) entitled in its own right to a free upgrade and a non-transferable Digital Licence tied to the PC's hardware.

A Digital Licence for Pro will not activate Home, or vice-versa. However the DL for Home was created, it should be completely independent of your DL for Pro.

 

• This machine came installed with XP OEM UPDATE - I lied: Just realised this machine came with Windows 7 but must have been OEM. I then bought my own RETAIL copy. It was getting on for ten years ago!
• I bought Win7Pro and did clean install
• I upgraded that to Win10Pro
• I deactivated that installation then reformatted the drive
• I installed Win10 Home which was activated when I checked the status.

 

Between 1 and 2 did you ever try upgrading to 10 just to try it out? If so (even if you rolled back straight away) that could explain how this PC got a digital licence for Home. If that's the case then the licence for Home is legitimate and (being an upgrade to an OEM version) only valid for that specific PC's hardware.

You Pro licence would be independent of that and being Retail should (as I understand it) be transferable.

 

Not that I am aware...I followed the steps above as far as I can remember. By the time Windows 10 was being offered for free I had had Win7Pro installed for some years. Machine was bought some 10 years ago long before Win10 was available.

UPDATE: In fact I also blocked the forced upgrade to windows 10 until June of 2016.

 

One thing with regard to Digital Licences for retail versions it's strongly advised that you set up a login with a Microsoft account, and log into this for a while so that the Licence will be associated to the Microsoft account which will make any future installations onto new or heavily modified hardware a lot smoother.

You can once the association is completed, decide to use a local account if that is your preference

 

How Home activated is a mystery? Windows 7 PC's do not store a key in the BIOS so no auto key detection happened. It should not have gotten a Digital License if no key was entered. Plus, the old PC still has the Pro Digital License tied to it. That License was not transferred, not that I can tell. The 7 Pro key was used a second time on a second device and that new device got its own DL. IMHO, that's just Microsoft being lenient with issuing Digital Licenses instead of being overly strict. The 7 Pro key wasn't flagged as already used.
For what it's worth its my opinion that the Pro DL on the old PC is a different DL from the one issued to the new PC, and one is not linked to the other. And the accidental Home activation is good to. They are both legal as far as the Microsoft Activation server is concerned.