I will be swapping my cpu tonight (from i5 to pentium). Will report back if my insider 10240 still remains activated after the swap.
No hardware involved ... Heisenberg's uncertainty principle Schrödinger's cat Zen Buddism These are my guesses.
Just reporting back...after having to swap motherboards only...from an asrock 990fx to an asus 990fx and losing activation, all is well again in this weird retail OS hell. What I did was take a shortcut and install win 8.1 with generic key on a separate partition, use slmgr to enter my correct 8.0 key, and then phone activation. Then I upgraded the Win 8.1, save nothing to Win 10 ISO downloaded from MS. Rebooted...a few updates, rebooted and was then able to boot into my original install. Changed the product key to match our generic one and fully activated again. I actually let the store change my product key. Edited my start up to make the original install the default and removed the upgraded one.
If changing parts of an assembled desktop kills activation, then M$ can go f**k themselves. I'll gladly go back to my "questionable ways". Seriously, if changing the motherboard (or mb+cpu) turns an entire rig into a "new device" and kills activation then that is the most bulls**t thing I've ever heard. I shouldn't have to re-buy an entire OS just because of some insanely stupid-ass mentality.
With OEM, changing hardware has a limitation to pieces. Because you're suppose to replace with the exact same model of hardware. I have called and told them that the hardware wasn't replaceable and was sent updated, and they gave me a code, way back when. Retail is different. I do agree with you seeing is how with Windows we are leasing the OS we don't own it, so we should have the right to use one OS where we want it like with retail. If they can give away 10 to people, they should make all of it retail lease.
Yes OEM is fine totally. An average user (or maybe slightly above-average idk ) may only replace/add RAM modules to his/her laptop, for example, and that's that. It probably shouldn't and wouldn't kill activation since the core of the system remains unchanged. However, I am talking about assembled desktops. My Win7 x64 Ultimate running on desktop has seen may changes/additions to PC parts. Most recent was the addition of another 4GB RAM stick (total 8GB now). Before this I'd added a second HDD, and 1.5 years back I'd added a GPU. 2 years ago I'd changed the entire rig (except monitor, mouse, kb and my first HDD which is the primary HDD). I've reinstalled Win7 three times till date and everytime it activated properly on install. I don't see any reason that should change with Win10.
Maybe I was not clear. MY motherboard swap is on my personally built non OEM system. Yes my motherboard fried, however it was the only thing that changed it was a asrock 990fx to asus 990fx...every other piece of the hardware remained the same and I was and am using my LEGIT Win 8 pro retail key. As they (MS) has stated if you had a retail key...then your new Win 10 OS would maintain all rights you had with you previous retail key, and you could make all the changes you wanted and remain activated so long as you upgraded correctly once. That is incorrect. Or just maybe a glitch in their system right now.
Good news: CPU swapped ( from i5-4690K to Pentium G3258) and system is still activated. I am still on insider 10240 and haven't done clean install yet.
To be precise: it's the Chip Set of the used Mothertboard!! On my old Laptop, after I was change the physical Chipset (done by an special Service Company in Bangkok), the activation were gone and an Phone Activation was on order with talking to an real live person! But not problem with that, that guy just told me, it were triggered by the change of the Chip Set, both North and South! Same will be happen and also solved with Windows 10!
Are you saying that I have to always install windows with my bios set to legacy BIOS mode instead of full UEFI and if I set it to UEFI to get secureboot that my windows will not activate any more? Surely not... Can you confirm this for sure?
There is quite a bit of guessing going on in this thread, even though there are things we already do know about based on previous Windows versions. Let me add some of these things: The idea of some kind of unique "harware id" is not new with Windows 10, and has been part of and extensively discussed in every Windows version since Windows XP. There is the "Installation ID", which you can see with "slmgr /dlv", and is present in Windows 10 too. We know that the Installation ID is generated from a combination of the product key and the details of the hardware. We know that changing any of these things changes the Installation ID: - Product key - BIOS serial number (BIOS UUID), commonly referred to as the motherboard serial number - MAC address - Hard Disk serial number - Amount of RAM in the system - and many other factors During phone activation, it is the Installation ID that you have to type in. Therefore, we know that Microsoft doesn't require anything other than the Installation ID to activate your system. From extensive experiments back in the Windows 8 and 8.1 days, we know that if you look at the Installation ID on one computer, and can reproduce that Installation ID exactly on another computer, than that second computer can also be successfully activated with the same activation tokens or activation response code from phone activation, even without Internet. We know that there is some tolerance in changes to the Installation ID. You can for example change the amount of RAM in the system, which changes the Installation ID, but that alone doesn't preclude you from reactivating the system. We also know that some changes in the Installation ID (e.g. BIOS UUID change, effectively motherboard change) are more significant and prevent reactivation. All the above have been verified using Virtual Machines in the Windows 8 and 8.1 days. In VMs, the hardware can be manipulated at will. For example, it is possible to change details of the hardware in two separate VMs such that their Installation IDs match up perfectly. Such VMs can all be successfully activated with the same activation tokens and phone activation response codes. It is therefore my opinion that, while we don't know everything about Microsoft's processes, to all practical purposes the Installation ID is effectively the magical "hardware ID" that people keep referring to. All the above applies to Windows 10 as well.