2 out of 3 in Win10?

[Diggs]

It used to be you could replace 2 out of three (HDD, MB or processor) under Win7 and retain Win7 activation. Does the same still hold true with Win10?

I have a laptop I am replacing the MB on and the replacement is coming with a Core i7 processor installed so I was just going to leave it in place and use it along with the old HDD. Anyone see any issues? I'd like to throw in a SSD but it needs to be a 1TB and besides the activation issues the customer doesn't need the added expense right now.

 

[Larry Sabo]

A few times now, I have swapped the HDD from one activated (but now dead) system to a replacement system and had it run all the programs fine and remain activated. The only thing in common was the processor, and the fact they were both activated Win10 system previously.

Today I returned a pair of SSD, one of which contained Veeam recovery files of an installation that failed to boot, the other being blank. Installed the blank SSD into an old Win7 laptop with an AMD processor and 8 GB of RAM, restored the Veeam backup, fixed the boot issue, verified it boots to the login screen then returned the SSDs. Just got notice that he put the recovered OS SSD back into his system and it booted up (and I assume activated) no problem. The customer's system is running Win10 Pro, has an i7 CPU, 32GB of memory and certainly not the same MB as I used to recover the system. Got another 5-star Google review to add to the collection, too.

 

[Porthos]

It used to be you could replace 2 out of three (HDD, MB or processor) under Win7 and retain Win7 activation. Does the same still hold true with Win10?

I have a laptop I am replacing the MB on and the replacement is coming with a Core i7 processor installed so I was just going to leave it in place and use it along with the old HDD. Anyone see any issues? I'd like to throw in a SSD but it needs to be a 1TB and besides the activation issues the customer doesn't need the added expense right now.

Depends on if the new board is from the Win 8 generation or newer. If it is not, You will have to use the COA from the computer to activate.
MS counts the MOTHERBOARD as the computer.

 

[Moltuae]

MS counts the MOTHERBOARD as the computer.

That's how I understand it. More specifically, in Windows 8/10, the licence is tied to the BIOS, is it not? Meaning that you can replace anything BUT the motherboard and the Windows installation will remain activated. The exception being that if you move a Windows installation from one computer/motherboard to another, if Windows 8/10 was previously installed and activated on the new computer/motherboard (or it has a licence associated with it), and the licence is the same edition (Home, Pro, etc), the Windows installation will inherit the new computer's/motherboard's activation status when it is moved.

 

[Diggs]

It was stated that it was pulled from a working machine and has a 6th generation i7 in it so I assume it's Win8 or later. Either way it looks like I should get activation. (Can a person tell if a machine is Home or Pro from the HDD? I have no problem seeing if Win7, Win8, Win10, etc. from the drive but never tried to see if Home or Pro from the drive?)

 

[Moltuae]

Can a person tell if a machine is Home or Pro from the HDD?

You could 'load hive' in regedit from another machine and examine the CurrentVersion key (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion), specifically the ProductName and EditionID string values.