True. I was so looking forward to generating new hwid on new hardware. The warm fuzzy feeling of doing that is real. But as usual, MS has to botch everything.
I have used the Search function to look for how to generate new hwid and was unable to find it. Can someone point me in the right direction please?
The SMBIOS' purpose IS to provide numerous tables of data describing a computer's configuration. (Even the clock speeds). Some of those tables have changed for sure. It already changes if the BIOS version changes on updates. I guess the activation system parses them even to get infos about hardware changes at all... So it seems the SMBIOS tables only play their role here by providing the data. The activation system then 'decides' what is still 'the same' and what not. The point you mean about the SMBIOS is (I assume) the SMBIOS GUID, but that should have changed by the mobo replacement. Code: wmic path win32_computersystemproduct get uuid That's why it is surprising (for me) that it still activated. The mobo is a new brand. The new CPU has got another CPUID. The SMBIOS GUID is different. I agree with your conclusion, though. The storage SNs and the NIC are most important, ....but the SMBIOS GUID seemingly not and that's the surprise. (It only has to be non-zero) ....perhaps to keep the NIC alone would be sufficient?!?
Was this not common knowledge? MOBO fingerprint's importance has been downgraded with the introduction of microsoft account backed activation. Microsoft are very happy with trading illusory loss of license renew revenue with certain user data expansion beyond the scope of a single machine. That and the fact that Intel has been pushing for it to help their own business model (new series - new socket haHa). And last, but not least, software spoofers become popular in online gaming cheating communities. So indeed, a dedicated expansion card (like optane memory, network accelerator or a nvme ssd) weights more in the HWID check. Not in y2k anymore, microsoft does partial fingerprint matching, and will update and re-weight just sections of it if tastier hardware was added. As for hwid-g3n-lol-censured, you bet microsoft tracks ip's and timestamps requests - do it just once, don't activate multiple editions in a single run as it's supposed to be an upgrade..
