Dell optiplex - how to transfer windows pro license to new SSD? (programming.dev)

submitted 11 months ago by rotmulaaginskyrim@programming.dev to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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I'm planning to replace the existing SSD within my Dell Optiplex pc. When I bought it, it came with an SSD that had a windows installation with pro license activated. Now, when I replace this with a new SSD, how do I transfer the license?

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[-] RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

So some fun facts:

If you buy enough licenses from Microsoft, instead of giving you a bunch of unique licence keys to keep track of, they will give you a license that you can install on a server, and a special "volume license key" that you use on every machine - then, instead of talking to Microsoft to activate themselves, they connect to your server which ensures that it is only activating as many machines as you have licenses for
These volume license keys are public knowledge to the point that Microsoft publish them on their site because they are useless unless you have a server to validate the activations
The server protocol is not complex, has been reverse engineered, and there are open source server implementations that forget the whole "ensure you have the right number of licenses" part

this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023

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