If the replacement is because of a problem with a failed one and you replace it with a board of roughly the same quality then, while it may take you a phone call to MS, you will normally get your activation continued. The only caveat is if your mobo is replaced. This registrationn is, as has been normal with MS, tied to the mobo which has the advantage that if you totally screw up your OS or suffer a drive failure you just do a clean install and you are good to go. COAs went out with Win 8 or 8.1 as MS went over to a digital licensing system where they read the mobo ID at first registration and activate it. I always thought the US Government was riddled with 'Agencies' like a street dog has fleas, certainly I believe they have more than three or four. That's another category…Įdited by Sam_Goofus, 11 June 2022 - 03:34 PM. Oh, I thought I could just take out the HDD and install the one I was using with real Windows, but it looks like they don't want you to do that anymore. I was going to go directly to Microsoft, but thought I'd get your good advice here. Can I do it with this? Should I not try, lest I be locked up? And, where would I get that magic 62 character number that's on a COA? That's ok, but I am used to registering the evil Windows 10 Pro in my name. To be honest, I haven't done a search on all this… The splash screen where a password should be is a non-icon of 'User' and one button. What I don't know is which Government Agency does he mean? Hopefully not the ATF or FBI! Also, in this case, how does the 'digital license' work? I didn't take it any further, and went ahead with the deal. I did a clean 10 pro install from media downloaded from Microsoft's media creation tool, and it immediately was activated by the Microsoft activation servers.” They are from a government agency and had been upgraded to Win 10. “There is no COA on these for win 10, it is a digital license. One of them being “Is there a COA for the Windows 10 Pro on board? Well, he sent this: Seller has great reputation, and answered my questions right away. This one is used, tested, new hard drive with Windows, and better graphics card than I have.

They have all gone up in price, no disk, and features are bleak.

My routine has been to buy from a Microsoft Authorized refurbisher, making sure the machine has a COA and, hopefully, a reinstallation disk. To save money (I'm below the poverty line, not a cheapskate!) I went off my usual routine, and bought a basically “used” machine. I recently bought a Dell Optiplex 9020 to replace the one I stupidly destroyed.

This is not a coa windows 10 pro