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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: could you even do that without buying an extra copy of Windows? Back in the old days you got a CD key with your PC, so you can install a fresh copy of Windows easily from your own media.

But nowadays it seems like not all keys are equal, and I'm under the impression that short of buying your own copy you can only reinstall the OEM, hacked-up version.

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The key is in the bios now so you should be able to load any OS that's the same version i.e. pro or home.

I've never tried though. I don't know if there is still a different version for OEM or VL windows like XP had different key types.

I just went through this with a new Dell XPS for my dad.

I performed a wipe/reinstall (with media created directly from a Microsoft download) and Windows 10 never asked me for a key after reinstalling it, and it reports as being activated.

Seems like they've moved away from requiring an OEM key in addition to the SLIC BIOS signature.

They went a step further. Once a Windows 10 machine is activated, a "hash" of its hardware is taken and associated with the product key. When you reinstall Windows 10, the activation service matches your hardware information with the product key. You need to enter a product key only the first time you install Windows 10 on a particular machine.

When I was building machines and asked about the OEM licence, this hardware hash is related to the motherboard. MS consider a new motherboard a new PC, everything else you should get away with changing.

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