Do I need to be online, If i use "slmgr /upk"...to uninstall my retail server 2008 product key ? Because I want to reuse it on another PC after uninstalling. And if Im not online, Microsoft will never see I uninstalled it ? And if Microsoft has never realized my "deinstallation", the new PC wont accept the "old" retail key ? (Because it is already in use ?)
Im aware of phone re-activation...and as it is not an OEM key, but retail, I still wonder what the answer would be.
MS only cares whether a specific key, except Multi-Activation keys, is used on more than one machine. Should be sufficient to install the default generic Retail key on machine 1 and use the legit key to activate machine 2. MS offers no way to actually deactivate Windows, the 'uninstall' will purge it from registry but the license will still linger in background (although inactive).