On 06/01/20 19:55, Michael Jones wrote: > > As for windows 10 licensing, don't trust me on this blindly, but your > license should be tied to the hardware fingerprint of the laptop. So > even installing windows fresh on your new SSD should result in Windows > activating automatically. In fact, you might want to take this > opportunity to try that out, to get a completely fresh installation > without the decade of old cruft built up by window's lack of a package > manager.
Two points with this - firstly if (like me) you DON'T have an MS account, this fingerprint is not stored anywhere so that won't work. Secondly, the fingerprint is likely stored on the hard drive somewhere so if you clone the hard drive you are hopefully good, and thirdly it's possible that the new hard drive will break the fingerprint so you're SOL whatever you do. However, in that last case, if you ring the licencing help line they MAY give you a new code because it is, still, technically the same laptop. Cheers, Wol
