A cheap i7 machine and Win 10.

[petersmart]

I recently bought a cheap i7 machine on Ebay for £147 for a YouTube Video.

It came with Win 10 Professional installed on a 1TB HDD so I put in a 250GB SSD and installed Win 10 there to see the improvement - which obviously was very good but when I installed the latest version of Win 10 and connected to the internet it automatically activated itself without me putting in any code.

I've seen this before on some other machines so is Microsoft easing up on the activation requirements or (as I've seen suggested) does the key stay on the machine?

I must also add that to install my copy of Win 10 (legally downloaded from Microsoft) I had to disable Safe Boot and disconnect the 1TB HDD.

Has anyone else noticed this behaviour?

 

[Steeps]

The key (OEM) used to be linked to hardware, upgrade too many parts and it would ask for reactivation. Generally if the motherboard stays the same it's happy to reactivate.

 

[twist]

The key (OEM) used to be linked to hardware, upgrade too many parts and it would ask for reactivation. Generally if the motherboard stays the same it's happy to reactivate.

This

 

[redsnappa]

This is very normal behaviour, and it's been normal behaviour since Windows Vista.

 

[hunnymonster]

Key stays in your Microsoft account does it not?

 

[Mr Bump]

the key is embedded in the BIOS nowadays, its a digital key.