Windows 10 deactivates after July 29, 2016 warranty motherboard change

[GotMetalBoy]

So I noticed some Dell Windows 8.1 laptops are on sale to make room for the new Windows 10 PC's and I was thinking about buying a cheap laptop to use specifically for programming my Axe-Fx II and LF+ PRO+ and bringing it with me as part of my rig. I usually buy a 2 year accidental damage warranty because laptops don't do so well around music gear and musicians :?

I contacted Dell to find out what would happen if I buy or have a Win8.1 PC and upgrade free to Win10 and then have to get the motherboard replaced under warranty after July 29, 2016. They said Win10 will deactivate and I would either have to pay the full retail price to buy Win10 or downgrade back to Win8.1.

I actually own a retail version of Win7 and Win8.1 that I paid for and I think it's ridiculousness that Microsoft is saying you can upgrade free to Win10 but they won't provide a full retail or upgrade activation key and it's tied to my motherboard. Most of the PC's I built have 3 year motherboard warranties. I've had to replace motherboards under warranty for both self built and store bought PC's before, so I think Microsoft needs to come up with a way to still allow Win10 to activate after a motherboard replacement if the customer can show proof that the motherboard was replaced under warranty.

OK I'm done ranting for now.

 

[Rick]

I upgraded today, lost all my favorites, but otherwise working. Seems ok so far.

 

[Stratman68]

Why would you think the MB is going to need to be replaced? I am a pretty pessimistic guy but I never worry about the MB going bad. I guess if your taking it on stages and outdoors, or smokey bars I can see it.

I also build my own PC's, since the 90's.

This is the main reason I always, I mean always, buy the retail upgrade of any M$ OS's. I will do the same with Win 10. Not right away since it's free for now. But I definitely will own 2 retail versions (one full Version and one upgrade version)

One for my desktop PC and one for my laptop..........then M$ can go to H***..................I'm legal on any PC or laptop I own.

Owning 7 & 8. like you do, makes my upgrade DVD's of W10 legit.

So just wait and "if" something happens buy the retail upgrade. Just MHO

 

[selta]

It will likely deactivate, yes. But as long as you're replacing it with an identical motherboard (since it's a Dell, it'll be OEM license, not retail), it'll re-activate just fine. This is clearly spelled out in the EULA.

If you own a retail copy of Windows, you can change components as you like. It'll likely trigger a re-activation, which at absolute worst will be a call to the automated activation line.

Neither of the above are new scenarios. Both have been true and SOP since WinXP.

Windows licensing, since Win95, has considered the "motherboard" (I put that in quotes as SoCs enter a nice gray area) to the be computer. The license key has, since that time, been tied to that single piece of hardware.
Some things have changed, especially along how the key works (the license key itself is pretty much useless now, as your computer will generate a hardware hash instead, for activation).

I wouldn't trust anything Dell says when it comes to Microsoft's EULA. Read it yourself and get your own answers direct from the horses mouth.

 

[Stratman68]

Selta

Are you quoting the EULA from Windows 10?

I agree about Dell not knowing anything, but I did some reading after GMB's op and it seems M$ has changed things.......That's what I take away from it. As you already know each component had a weight (#) and if you reached a certain # you had to call to reactivate. Like Hard drive 3 points, Mother board 6 points, cpu 4 points and so on..... (not real #'s of course). Depending how many things you replaced, etc, etc, etc. Then motherboards were it as you state.

It's also only $119 retail, and you own it. Also states the home version is pretty much all most of us need. I think they changed it because they are giving it away for the first year. They have never done that with a new numbered version, ever.

Check out m$ press releases on it and see what you think. Just sayin.................

 

[selta]

I've been running Win10 since build 9926 of the beta... about November 2014 . On my home computers, DAW, HTPC and two work computers have the RTM release as well. This past week, my company has started to flush out our plan for Win10 roll out, though it's likely we're going to wait until Server 2016 is RTM before putting a ton of effort into it.
I was not directly, copy/paste quoting the EULA from Win10, but the facts were taken from it, yes. Just paraphrased.
I also deal with the service agreement at my company, and deal with MS directly on licensing, EULA and so on. I'm quite well versed in what is and isn't factual about the license with Win10 - and pretty much every other Windows OS and Office product since about 2004.

"M$" is childish and only makes any discussion on the topic hard to take seriously. I haven't seen anyone toss that around in many years... I thought it was quite dead.

Win10 is not being given away for free the first year. Win10 UPGRADES, from select, legitimate older OSes is. That is a huge difference - if you're building a new computer, you cannot go out and get Win10 for free - you can only upgrade from legacy OSes. It's not too unlike the super cheap Win7 to Win8 upgrades they did as well. A lot of the same, misinformed "facts" are being stated now that were spread during that time as well. As we all know, everyone running that cheap upgrade turned out just fine.

I don't need to look at MS press releases (see previously about what I do for a day job)- but, even if you do, it's quite plain what the facts are. In addition, there is a public MS FAQ page on the upgrade as well which answers most of these questions in depth.

The "weight" you are talking about is the hardware hash I referred to earlier. Not many people know how that hash is generated or works - for good measure. It'd be pretty dumb for MS to release how it works. Enough of a delta in the hash will trigger re-activation, which in general will just happen automatically in the background. If you change a lot of hardware, or the motherboard, you'll have to go through the manual activation process - the same call in sequence we've been using since Windows XP.

 

[shasha]

I had a hang up during the upgrade and had to roll back. It deactivated my copy of Win7 for some reason, but I was able to reactivate if over the phone (didn't care for my fully legal serial number for some reason). Went through the upgrade process again and it's been working like a million bucks since. I also updated my tablet and it's kind of nice having a similar setup rather than two different OS's. It definitely runs better on the tablet than Win8.1 did.

 

[GotMetalBoy]

Why would you think the MB is going to need to be replaced? I am a pretty pessimistic guy but I never worry about the MB going bad. I guess if your taking it on stages and outdoors, or smokey bars I can see it.

I also build my own PC's, since the 90's.

This is the main reason I always, I mean always, buy the retail upgrade of any M$ OS's. I will do the same with Win 10. Not right away since it's free for now. But I definitely will own 2 retail versions (one full Version and one upgrade version)

One for my desktop PC and one for my laptop..........then M$ can go to H***..................I'm legal on any PC or laptop I own.

Owning 7 & 8. like you do, makes my upgrade DVD's of W10 legit.

So just wait and "if" something happens buy the retail upgrade. Just MHO

I've been building my own Desktop PC's since the late 90's. Can you build your own laptops? I haven't looked into if it's now possible to build laptops but in the paste we used rack mounted PC's like laptops.

I've been working in the IT field too long. A busy day at work for me means a lot of customers are having a bad day because we only get contacted when something isn't working or broken. I have to remind myself that even though we have to have many Dell's repaired under warranty, they are a very small percentage but again I never here about the thousand of Dell's with no issues.

The main thing that seems to go bad on the motherboards are the USB ports or it just won't power on or charge the battery. I guess if the USB ports stopped working it would be cheaper to buy an ExpressCard than Win10.


When you say "Owning 7 & 8. like you do, makes my upgrade DVD's of W10 legit." - How does that make W10 legit? M$ isn't giving us a legit activation key. If you look at the W10 key after upgrading by using ProduKey or something similar your key will end with 3V66T and if you do a google search of your full W10 key, you'll see that everyone who has upgraded has the same key.

 

[GotMetalBoy]

I've been running Win10 since build 9926 of the beta... about November 2014 . On my home computers, DAW, HTPC and two work computers have the RTM release as well. This past week, my company has started to flush out our plan for Win10 roll out, though it's likely we're going to wait until Server 2016 is RTM before putting a ton of effort into it.
I was not directly, copy/paste quoting the EULA from Win10, but the facts were taken from it, yes. Just paraphrased.
I also deal with the service agreement at my company, and deal with MS directly on licensing, EULA and so on. I'm quite well versed in what is and isn't factual about the license with Win10 - and pretty much every other Windows OS and Office product since about 2004.

"M$" is childish and only makes any discussion on the topic hard to take seriously. I haven't seen anyone toss that around in many years... I thought it was quite dead.

Win10 is not being given away for free the first year. Win10 UPGRADES, from select, legitimate older OSes is. That is a huge difference - if you're building a new computer, you cannot go out and get Win10 for free - you can only upgrade from legacy OSes. It's not too unlike the super cheap Win7 to Win8 upgrades they did as well. A lot of the same, misinformed "facts" are being stated now that were spread during that time as well. As we all know, everyone running that cheap upgrade turned out just fine.

I don't need to look at MS press releases (see previously about what I do for a day job)- but, even if you do, it's quite plain what the facts are. In addition, there is a public MS FAQ page on the upgrade as well which answers most of these questions in depth.

The "weight" you are talking about is the hardware hash I referred to earlier. Not many people know how that hash is generated or works - for good measure. It'd be pretty dumb for MS to release how it works. Enough of a delta in the hash will trigger re-activation, which in general will just happen automatically in the background. If you change a lot of hardware, or the motherboard, you'll have to go through the manual activation process - the same call in sequence we've been using since Windows XP.

So if I owned Win7 Pro 64bit retail and bought the Win8.1 Pro 64bit upgrade, am I allowed to install Win8.1 Pro 64bit on a new PC I built as long as I've wiped Win8.1 Pro 64bit off my previous PC? From what I've read I'm allowed to but with W10, M$ isn't offering a way to purchase an upgrade, only Full or nothing. Also M$ seems to be saying that after July 29, 2016, if for some reason your W10 needs to be reactivated, they will not be giving the option to call to get that super long key and your only option will be to buy W10 Retail. I've even read that M$ will deactivate your previous OEM and Retail activation key for W7 or W8.1 that you used to upgrade to W10 after 30 days unless you select to go back to your previous OS, so you won't be able to downgrade back if for some reason you can't reactivate W10 after July 29, 2016.

 

[Ben Randolph]

Just in my opinion, this is one of the downsides to using an OS that phones home to a company that treats it's customers like criminals.

I'm sorry, I'm just bitter from a very bad experience I had with a Windows 8 VM that kept deactivating itself. The issue was that I was running it as a Parallels VM under OS X *and* as a Bootcamp partition on my Macbook Pro. Never both at the same time. Things went fine for a long time, until Windows suddenly decided that I was running the OS on 2 separate systems and decided to deactivate itself.

I realize that it's a technical grey area here. It was a single install of the OS on a single machine, but if I wanted to access my Windows install while running OS X without having to reboot entirely, Windows saw it as me running it on a second machine.

No issue, I figure I'll call Microsoft, explain the situation and agree to run exclusively in Bootcamp or in Parallels if they'll simply un-ban my serial #. The problem was explaining this to the outsourced 3rd-world support reps on a crappy international call. The issue was that my situation was fairly unique to the Mac and they a) speak English as a 3rd or worse language and b) aren't trained for any situation that is not explicitly covered in their script.

After over 3 hours of phone calls where I fruitlessly tried to explain that no, I'm not a criminal, and that I am happy to legally run the copy of Windows I paid for as per the EULA, I gave up and chalked it up to lost cause.

I am a bit bitter because this situation could have been easily and quickly handled had Microsoft's support reps been better trained. Microsoft sent me a satisfaction survey after this ordeal where I related my terrible experience. No reply or follow up. Lovely.

Oh well, sorry for the anti-Microsoft rant. I promise I am in no way a fanboy or anti-fanboy of any company. Just a paying customer who would have appreciated better treatment.

 

[mwd]

I'll be waiting to see how many computers M$ craps out on Windoze 10. Childish or not. Any company that can put out the likes of Windows ME, Vista and 8 is well worth waiting for the dust to settle. Their recent updates have started freezing my browser at work forcing me to pop up an instance of Safari to actually surf with sanity.

 

[Stratman68]

I've been building my own Desktop PC's since the late 90's. Can you build your own laptops? I haven't looked into if it's now possible to build laptops but in the paste we used rack mounted PC's like laptops.

I've been working in the IT field too long. A busy day at work for me means a lot of customers are having a bad day because we only get contacted when something isn't working or broken. I have to remind myself that even though we have to have many Dell's repaired under warranty, they are a very small percentage but again I never here about the thousand of Dell's with no issues.

The main thing that seems to go bad on the motherboards are the USB ports or it just won't power on or charge the battery. I guess if the USB ports stopped working it would be cheaper to buy an ExpressCard than Win10.


When you say "Owning 7 & 8. like you do, makes my upgrade DVD's of W10 legit." - How does that make W10 legit? M$ isn't giving us a legit activation key. If you look at the W10 key after upgrading by using ProduKey or something similar your key will end with 3V66T and if you do a google search of your full W10 key, you'll see that everyone who has upgraded has the same key.

I meant...Since I have (and you) have legit paid for retail copies of Win 7 &wwin 8.1-that makes the Upgrade DVD purchase legit. Hope that makes sense.

I figured you also did the same with your desktop stuff, from other threads over the years and computer talk...............Not laptops. I'm on your side on this, hope it didn't co9me off otherwise. I just likeing buying the OS outright, etc and ending all the EULA cap.

 

[Stratman68]

I've been running Win10 since build 9926 of the beta... about November 2014 . On my home computers, DAW, HTPC and two work computers have the RTM release as well. This past week, my company has started to flush out our plan for Win10 roll out, though it's likely we're going to wait until Server 2016 is RTM before putting a ton of effort into it.
I was not directly, copy/paste quoting the EULA from Win10, but the facts were taken from it, yes. Just paraphrased.
I also deal with the service agreement at my company, and deal with MS directly on licensing, EULA and so on. I'm quite well versed in what is and isn't factual about the license with Win10 - and pretty much every other Windows OS and Office product since about 2004.

"M$" is childish and only makes any discussion on the topic hard to take seriously. I haven't seen anyone toss that around in many years... I thought it was quite dead.

Win10 is not being given away for free the first year. Win10 UPGRADES, from select, legitimate older OSes is. That is a huge difference - if you're building a new computer, you cannot go out and get Win10 for free - you can only upgrade from legacy OSes. It's not too unlike the super cheap Win7 to Win8 upgrades they did as well. A lot of the same, misinformed "facts" are being stated now that were spread during that time as well. As we all know, everyone running that cheap upgrade turned out just fine.

I don't need to look at MS press releases (see previously about what I do for a day job)- but, even if you do, it's quite plain what the facts are. In addition, there is a public MS FAQ page on the upgrade as well which answers most of these questions in depth.

The "weight" you are talking about is the hardware hash I referred to earlier. Not many people know how that hash is generated or works - for good measure. It'd be pretty dumb for MS to release how it works. Enough of a delta in the hash will trigger re-activation, which in general will just happen automatically in the background. If you change a lot of hardware, or the motherboard, you'll have to go through the manual activation process - the same call in sequence we've been using since Windows XP.

Wow--- relax man.............it's a discussion and I said just about the same thing you did, except I replied in "regular laymans terms"--- My reply was based around the "regular" home user..................

I have had issues with "exactly" what I stated..................more than once. Arguing with some M$ sale\tech\rep whatever about how I replaced a hard drive and CPU, or a graphics card and whatever. Hash whatever, they all carried a different weight when it came to re-activating the OS, I don't care what you do or how you say it................Sorry I don't know all the technical jargon in the EULA, my response was about "real world" experiences, nothing more.......

M$.........Childish? Give me a break please.

That's all.......

 

[Ben Randolph]

I think a lot of the issue is just how poorly trained a lot of Microsoft's outsourced support is (Wipro, I know they outsource support to). When Windows 8.1 dropped, I had a support rep *insist* that the 8.1 upgrade from 8 was free only if your computer came with Windows 8 pre-installed. Despite the fact that I had Microsoft's own 8.1 FAQ site in front of me clearly stating it was a free upgrade to all Windows 8 users, the rep insisted it was only it Win8 came pre-installed.

It's like the Harry Mudd episode of Star Trek where Kirk and Spock talk to the android women. "If I am your creator and therefore perfect, then everything I say is a lie!" "Does not compute! SHUTDOWN."

Oy vey. Apple may have its own issues, but at least I don't get these stupid shell games played with the OS. If my Mac is on the list, then the latest OS X is free. No shell games. Yes, I pay more for the hardware, bit I save the headache.

 

[Stratman68]

I think a lot of the issue is just how poorly trained a lot of Microsoft's outsourced support is (Wipro, I know they outsource support to). When Windows 8.1 dropped, I had a support rep *insist* that the 8.1 upgrade from 8 was free only if your computer came with Windows 8 pre-installed. Despite the fact that I had Microsoft's own 8.1 FAQ site in front of me clearly stating it was a free upgrade to all Windows 8 users, the rep insisted it was only it Win8 came pre-installed.

It's like the Harry Mudd episode of Star Trek where Kirk and Spock talk to the android women. "If I am your creator and therefore perfect, then everything I say is a lie!" "Does not compute! SHUTDOWN."

Oy vey. Apple may have its own issues, but at least I don't get these stupid shell games played with the OS. If my Mac is on the list, then the latest OS X is free. No shell games. Yes, I pay more for the hardware, bit I save the headache.

Love that explanation Ben................. Mudd did have some woman for sure. Full name Harcord Fenton Mudd, I think...............

 

[selta]

Just in my opinion, this is one of the downsides to using an OS that phones home to a company that treats it's customers like criminals.

I'm sorry, I'm just bitter from a very bad experience I had with a Windows 8 VM that kept deactivating itself. The issue was that I was running it as a Parallels VM under OS X *and* as a Bootcamp partition on my Macbook Pro. Never both at the same time. Things went fine for a long time, until Windows suddenly decided that I was running the OS on 2 separate systems and decided to deactivate itself.

I realize that it's a technical grey area here. It was a single install of the OS on a single machine, but if I wanted to access my Windows install while running OS X without having to reboot entirely, Windows saw it as me running it on a second machine.

No issue, I figure I'll call Microsoft, explain the situation and agree to run exclusively in Bootcamp or in Parallels if they'll simply un-ban my serial #. The problem was explaining this to the outsourced 3rd-world support reps on a crappy international call. The issue was that my situation was fairly unique to the Mac and they a) speak English as a 3rd or worse language and b) aren't trained for any situation that is not explicitly covered in their script.

After over 3 hours of phone calls where I fruitlessly tried to explain that no, I'm not a criminal, and that I am happy to legally run the copy of Windows I paid for as per the EULA, I gave up and chalked it up to lost cause.

I am a bit bitter because this situation could have been easily and quickly handled had Microsoft's support reps been better trained. Microsoft sent me a satisfaction survey after this ordeal where I related my terrible experience. No reply or follow up. Lovely.

Oh well, sorry for the anti-Microsoft rant. I promise I am in no way a fanboy or anti-fanboy of any company. Just a paying customer who would have appreciated better treatment.

Actually, that's not a gray area. That's spelled out in the EULA specifically, in two areas:

a. License. The software is licensed, not sold. Under this agreement, we grant you the right to install and run one instance of the software on your device (the licensed device), for use by one person at a time, so long as you comply with all the terms of this agreement. Updating or upgrading from non-genuine software with software from Microsoft or authorized sources does not make your original version or the updated/upgraded version genuine, and in that situation, you do not have a license to use the software.
b. Device. In this agreement, “device” means a hardware system (whether physical or virtual) with an internal storage device capable of running the software. A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a device.

and

(iv) Use in a virtualized environment. This license allows you to install only one instance of the software for use on one device, whether that device is physical or virtual. If you want to use the software on more than one virtual device, you must obtain a separate license for each instance.

Sooo... you were technically breaking the terms of the EULA. Yes, it'll work. A lot of people do it without issues. But, it's not even a gray area - you need to purchase two licenses.

 

[selta]

So if I owned Win7 Pro 64bit retail and bought the Win8.1 Pro 64bit upgrade, am I allowed to install Win8.1 Pro 64bit on a new PC I built as long as I've wiped Win8.1 Pro 64bit off my previous PC? From what I've read I'm allowed to but with W10, M$ isn't offering a way to purchase an upgrade, only Full or nothing. Also M$ seems to be saying that after July 29, 2016, if for some reason your W10 needs to be reactivated, they will not be giving the option to call to get that super long key and your only option will be to buy W10 Retail. I've even read that M$ will deactivate your previous OEM and Retail activation key for W7 or W8.1 that you used to upgrade to W10 after 30 days unless you select to go back to your previous OS, so you won't be able to downgrade back if for some reason you can't reactivate W10 after July 29, 2016.

As long as your purchased Retail and not OEM. Retail allows you to transfer the license to a new set of hardware, as long as it is fully transferred (i.e. not trying to run the same license on two systems, even if one is a VM on the same hardware. The hardware abstraction layer is defined as a new system per EULA). OEM does not allow transfer at all. However, in the case of hardware failure, OEM will allow you to reactivate on identical hardware.
Yes, when you upgrade a Win7 or WIn8 key to Win10, that key is "consumed". You have IIRC 30 days to roll back to the previous version. After that, the key is legally unusable (but, likely, you can install with it and even activate - though I would recommend not trying). You don't get a free lunch . If I trade you a Gibson for a Strat, and decide later that I want my strat back but not giving the Gibson back... that's not really fair.
You absolutely will have the normal re-activation ability after the free upgrade window closes for Retail licenses. OEM is a hazy area, and hoenstly one I don't follow closely as it doesn't impact my MSA with Microsoft, nor my home use as I only buy retail.

 

[Ben Randolph]

Sooo... you were technically breaking the terms of the EULA. Yes, it'll work. A lot of people do it without issues. But, it's not even a gray area - you need to purchase two licenses.

No argument, though in my opinion it is a dumb grey area. It's the same install of Windows on a single machine, just initiated in two different ways. My issue was having to go through an ordeal with idiots in an attempt to get things explained.

Therefore, I vote with my wallet and no longer purchase Microsoft software for my home. Has not been an issue since there are plenty of excellent alternatives nowadays.

 

[mwd]

Therefore, I vote with my wallet and no longer purchase Microsoft software for my home. Has not been an issue since there are plenty of excellent alternatives nowadays.

Having grown up on Microsoft, since DOS 2.0, with tons of experience and software I fought, fought, fought any suggestion of Apple products. But a buddy and I were having a compatible weirdness between the Logic he used and the Sonar I used to record with. I went and got a loan for 4K and spent 2500 of it on an iMac and 1500 beefing up my Windows computer while I could. Already had quadruple Raptors in my Windows box so it wound up being about the same investment as the iMac when I got done.

Once I accustomed to OSX and Logic (which took a week) my Windows computer just sat there. Now after 7 years I probably have 2 hours on it to edit photos and operate a lighting virtualization software. I have to dink with 15 MS boxes at work all day, all week. It is such a pleasure to come home and use the computer for what you needed it for without the hassles and mentality of Microsoft.

 

[Stratman68]

Having grown up on Microsoft, since DOS 2.0, with tons of experience and software I fought, fought, fought any suggestion of Apple products. But a buddy and I were having a compatible weirdness between the Logic he used and the Sonar I used to record with. I went and got a loan for 4K and spent 2500 of it on an iMac and 1500 beefing up my Windows computer while I could. Already had quadruple Raptors in my Windows box so it wound up being about the same investment as the iMac when I got done.

Once I accustomed to OSX and Logic (which took a week) my Windows computer just sat there. Now after 7 years I probably have 2 hours on it to edit photos and operate a lighting virtualization software. I have to dink with 15 MS boxes at work all day, all week. It is such a pleasure to come home and use the computer for what you needed it for without the hassles and mentality of Microsoft.

Funny, I did the exact opposite. Started with macs, got tired of certain things I won't go into and went to windows and never looked back. I think it's great that both platforms are supported (by people like us I mean) today.