W10 still activates just fine on dell oem. But why?

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Fordiesel69

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I had read back in sept of 2023 that microsoft shut down their activation servers for w7 and w8 to w10 upgrades and product keys.

However with great success over the weekend I am thinking that they must have been pressured by OEM's to revert back. Anyone have insight into this?

I installed genuine dell windows 7 pro 64bit on a dell micro, then upgraded using a w10 ver 1809 usb stick. I made sure to do the upgrade in windows and not in the setup mode.

Once w10 booted up, I connected a network cable and clicked the fix activation troublshooter and it activated no problem.

I then went to the media creation tool and updated to 22h2 version. Still is activated.

-----------

Now, in years past, becuase i am ocd, I always let it run for a bit, then reformat, put the bios in UEFI mode with secure boot, then reinstall fresh. I may not do that this go around as maybe it wont activate. Not sure. I may read up how to covert the current OS over from legacy to UEFI.
 
If it's an OEM license, it might not actually activate over the internet. The product key is hard-coded into the BIOS on Dell PCs, is it not ? As long as the key is a valid sequence of numbers (they use "check" digit(s)), Windows itself knows it's a valid number/key.
 
-It never had W10 on it. Funny enough it still had BIOS A00.
-It has some kind of dell license hard coded into the bios for dell windows 7 and you are partially correct, windows 7 never has to activate, it shows "Windows is activated" the moment it boots fresh install even if not connected to internet. HOWEVER windows 10 shows not activated until you connect to the internet and click the troubleshooter (or just leave it for a few hours).

So something is still working to activate it.
 
Fordiesel69 said:
-It never had W10 on it. Funny enough it still had BIOS A00.
-It has some kind of dell license hard coded into the bios for dell windows 7 and you are partially correct, windows 7 never has to activate, it shows "Windows is activated" the moment it boots fresh install even if not connected to internet. HOWEVER windows 10 shows not activated until you connect to the internet and click the troubleshooter (or just leave it for a few hours).

So something is still working to activate it.
Click to expand...

My experience (but others have had different experiences) with at least HP computers is that Win7 keys do not activate Win10 until after the initial setup is done - which would kind of mirror your current experience. If a Win7 key was stored in the ACPI table by the OEM, it would make sense to me that Win7 would automatically activate in a fresh install but not immediately for a win10. Then again, that's only my experience with HP computers but I haven't tried it enough on Dell, Lenovos, or other OEMs to correlate. Others have been able to successfully activate Win7 keys on initial Windows setup.
 
So now that I have 22h2 running in legacy mode (upgraded from W7 pro) I hate upgraded installs. Too much to go wrong in the future. Can I switch the bios to UEFI / Secure boot ON, and reinstall 22H2 off a USB drive and have it auto activate (as it has already been activated).
 
Fordiesel69 said:
So now that I have 22h2 running in legacy mode (upgraded from W7 pro) I hate upgraded installs. Too much to go wrong in the future. Can I switch the bios to UEFI / Secure boot ON, and reinstall 22H2 off a USB drive and have it auto activate (as it has already been activated).
Click to expand...

Just try it. It should still work.
 
My last spare SSD is installed in this machine, and it is working......

Id hate to just try it. Anyone know for sure if it will work?
 
It's a clean installation so you have nothing to lose if you just try it. No one else can give you a definite answer.

Update the BIOS first.
 
Fordiesel69 said:
My last spare SSD is installed in this machine, and it is working......

Id hate to just try it. Anyone know for sure if it will work?
Click to expand...

AFAIK, you'll have to do a clean reinstall anyways when switching between 'legacy' and uefi but I'm sure it'll work
 
Windows 10/11 use the same activation server. For work, I image HVAC technciians laptops. Brand new, off the shelf DELL laptops we buy 100 at a pop.

They come with Windows 11.

I have an image I update every couple of months and write the image to the new laptops, erasing verything from Dell (all partitions removed and my own added.)

I use Windows 10 Pro because our software has not been tested with Windows 11.

Windows 10 Pro activates with a digital license each time. Our Dell Rep told us it would no problem, same activation servers as Windows 11. Any Windows 11 key will activate with Windows 10 or 11 and vice versa. At least OEM digital license keys.

Also, I have to edit the group policy in my image so Microsoft doesn't constantly bombard the technicians for the FREE upgrade to Windows 11. You can turn that off in the policy section of the registry.
 
Hall said:
If it's an OEM license, it might not actually activate over the internet. The product key is hard-coded into the BIOS on Dell PCs, is it not ? As long as the key is a valid sequence of numbers (they use "check" digit(s)), Windows itself knows it's a valid number/key.
Click to expand...
Dell does encode the license in the bios.

OP, from which site did you download W10?
 
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