jps
|
| posted on 7/2/19 at 08:43 PM |
|
|
Buying Microsoft Windows
Has anyone got recent experience of buying MS Windows. My laptop hard drive recently expired so I now have no way of getting the licence key for a
reinstall...
I see some places offering licences online for less than the £140 odd Microsoft want..?
|
|
|
|
|
Kev99
|
| posted on 7/2/19 at 09:13 PM |
|
|
Got my windows 10 key off e/bay for something like £4:99, about 18 months ago, not had a problem
Just download windows 10 from Microsoft site and use the key from e/bay
Kev....
|
|
|
Slimy38
|
| posted on 7/2/19 at 09:20 PM |
|
|
Same here, I think I've bought about half a dozen now, no more than a fiver each. There is a question around the full legalities of them, they
appear to take advantage of some Microsoft rule that a licence can be sold with a piece of equipment.
There is a theory that they can be cancelled if they're considered a violation, but mine have been active now for quite a few years.
|
|
|
gremlin1234
|
| posted on 7/2/19 at 09:59 PM |
|
|
windows 10 licensing is 'digital' it means they 'fingerprint' your machine, and if you have to re-install windows, it keeps
its original licence
you can legitimately download win10 from ms directly, and just re-install it. - yes even with minor hardware changes
|
|
|
jps
|
| posted on 7/2/19 at 10:44 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
even with minor hardware changes
I'll try it but not feeling confident that will stretch to a new hard drive!
|
|
|
ReMan
|
| posted on 8/2/19 at 08:29 AM |
|
|
Ditto for buying form eBay. Just get a reliable looking UK seller
www.plusnine.co.uk
|
|
|
mcerd1
|
| posted on 8/2/19 at 08:45 AM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by jps
quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
even with minor hardware changes
I'll try it but not feeling confident that will stretch to a new hard drive!
hard drives were always fine with the older windows - it was motherboards that was the big one for MS (and too many changes of CPU / graphics etc -
even then the worst you had to do was phone them to get it reactivated)
a hard drive is just storage not the computer - as far as the older windows was concerned you were just reinstalling, just like if you were cleaning
it out / recovering from a virus etc. It never used to care what drive you were installing it on 
seems to be loads of guides on how to reactivate win10 too, so I assume it much the same - just google "re-activate Windows 10"
Also have you considered swapping the HDD for an SSD ?
a SATA SSD makes even old machines much, much quicker - my 11 year old desktop starts up from cold in ~20 seconds 
[Edited on 8/2/2019 by mcerd1]
[Edited on 8/2/2019 by mcerd1]
-
|
|
|
MikeRJ
|
| posted on 8/2/19 at 09:48 AM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
windows 10 licensing is 'digital' it means they 'fingerprint' your machine, and if you have to re-install windows, it keeps
its original licence
you can legitimately download win10 from ms directly, and just re-install it. - yes even with minor hardware changes
That depends on how the original was installed. More details
here.
|
|
|
mcerd1
|
| posted on 8/2/19 at 10:55 AM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by MikeRJ
quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
windows 10 licensing is 'digital' it means they 'fingerprint' your machine, and if you have to re-install windows, it keeps
its original licence
you can legitimately download win10 from ms directly, and just re-install it. - yes even with minor hardware changes
That depends on how the original was installed. More details
here.
if it came on the laptop originally then the maker should be able supply you with some kind of recovery media ?
(in ye olde days the recovery cd just came in the box with the machine, these days its often an extra few £  )
mind you if you use a recovery image it'll install windows and the drivers, but also all the bloatware too
so a fresh download of Win10 + the product key off the laptop might be better anyway 
btw what make of machine is it ?
[Edited on 8/2/2019 by mcerd1]
-
|
|
|
jps
|
| posted on 8/2/19 at 02:20 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by mcerd1
btw what make of machine is it ?
[Edited on 8/2/2019 by mcerd1]
It's a Samsung laptop - i can't remember where we bought it from, Amazon I think - back in 2013.
It has a Windows 8 sticker on the bottom (no serial number though!) - and I seem to remember that at some point a few months (or years?!) after buying
it we got an option to download a free upgrade to a better version of Windows - perhaps from 8 to 8.1 - although I can't really remember...
|
|
|
Slimy38
|
| posted on 8/2/19 at 06:09 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by jps
quote:
Originally posted by mcerd1
btw what make of machine is it ?
[Edited on 8/2/2019 by mcerd1]
It's a Samsung laptop - i can't remember where we bought it from, Amazon I think - back in 2013.
It has a Windows 8 sticker on the bottom (no serial number though!) - and I seem to remember that at some point a few months (or years?!) after buying
it we got an option to download a free upgrade to a better version of Windows - perhaps from 8 to 8.1 - although I can't really remember...
From memory all versions of Windows got the option of a free upgrade to 10. I did the same with a Windows 7 licence.
I then upgraded my PC and had all sorts of trouble because it didn't recognise the PC or the licence key. I never did figure out how you were
meant to recover it in that situation. That's when I bought my first Ebay licence.
Oddly enough this 'reactivation' process was the subject of a youtube video that I watched recently. Linus Tech Tips frequently review
different configurations of PC hardware, and someone commented why they always ran an 'unlicenced' version of software. It's not
that they didn't have licences (they had bought silly amounts of licences over the years), it's just that with hardware testing they got
fed up of having to reactivate the licence several times a day. So now they just don't.
|
|
|
dmac
|
| posted on 8/2/19 at 06:15 PM |
|
|
Have you checked the inside of the battery compartment, they sometimes put the reg key sticker in there.
|
|
|
tims31
|
| posted on 8/2/19 at 08:45 PM |
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by jps
quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
even with minor hardware changes
I'll try it but not feeling confident that will stretch to a new hard drive!
I fitted a SSD drive in my lads laptop and just installed Windows 10 no problems. As stated, the digital licence sees the PC and registers it
automatically so long as nothing major has changed it should be ok.
Use this tool here to create a USB drive and install it from there as a fresh install.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
[Edited on 8/2/19 by tims31]
Build: http://www.martinsfurybuild.co.uk/
|
|
|
