Can you reuse Windows 10 OEM licenses

[Matthew McCabe]

I'm finding it terribly hard to get a definitive answer on this, even from a solicitor... My understanding is that under EU law if a computer has been decommissioned its OEM Windows 10 license can be used again on a new PC... Does any software licensing expert (!) know if that's correct?

 

[billybob99]

The OEM key can be reused on the same hardware. It can't be transferred to new/different hardware.

A retail key can be transferred to new hardware.

Source of info.

 

[Matthew McCabe]

Hi

Yes that is the terms of the license however I understand there is an EU law that trump's this. I'll supply a source shortly.

 

[Matthew McCabe]

Oh - turns out I can't until I have 30 posts...

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Tricky one. The answer is no. You might have noticed that in windows 10 it says digital entitlement not license key anymore. Digital entitlements are different and don't fall under the eu law you will provide shortly. The EU law specifies transfer from licence keys not digital entitlements.

 

[Matthew McCabe]

Hmm that's a bummer because it would have saved me a lot of money... The hard thing is there's no way MS will pull you up on it. The only thing holding me back is the morality of it which isn't a great burden on my conscience as it's such a tiny technicality... And would it even hold up in court anyway?

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Fun fact about the digital licensing terms in windows 10. Let's say you devide your drive into 2 partitions and install on each partition a w10. Both would activate with the digital entitlement but Microsoft tos states you would need actually 2 licenses to operate in this way. Adding another license to the 2nd install would not work either since addigital entitlement already exist and you get an error during activation. Go figure how to solve that problem.

 

[Matthew McCabe]

Sounds like your speaking from experience... Do you have a source for the change with digital entitlement?

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Pretty much any big player is switching to either subscription models or digital entitlements. Let's say you buy office 2019 in currys and in the box is a product key. All that key does is to create @ office.com/setup to redeem the code for a digital entitlement that is hard linked to your account.

In regards to 2 partition with 2 W10 installations, I guess this is coming from legal people writing the eula / tos but not understanding the difference between partitions and running virtual machines.

For the rest google is your friend.