

Once you've confirmed that Windows 11 is activated, follow these steps: If you're not activated, complete the activation process with the steps you see on the Activation page. If you experience an error while activating, see Get help with Windows activation errors. Select the Start button, then select Settings > System > Activation. Prepare your Windows 11 device for a hardware changeįirst, follow these steps to find out if Windows 11 is already activated. Then, use the following info to help you successfully prepare for a hardware change and reactivate Windows. To find out which you need, see "What activation method do I use, product key or digital license?" in Activate Windows. To activate Windows, you'll need either a digital license or a product key.

If you make significant hardware changes on your device, such as replacing your motherboard, Windows will no longer find a license that matches your device, and you’ll need to reactivate Windows to get it up and running.

When installing Windows 11, the digital license associates itself with your device's hardware. There, we click on the Change product key and we can enter the code manually.Activation helps verify that your copy of Windows is genuine and hasn’t been used on more devices than the Microsoft Software License Terms allow. The easiest is to go to Settings – Update and Security – Activation. Once we have deactivated the original computer, we move on to activate Windows 10 on the new PC. In addition, we have to execute the command slmgr /cpky to remove the license from the registry.

If you do not see the window, run the command several times until it appears. There, we enter the command slmgr /upk to deactivate the installation, where we will be warned with a window saying that “The product has been successfully uninstalled”. To do this, we go to Command Prompt (CMD), and run as administrator. How to transfer a Windows 10 license to a new PC?įirst, we have to deactivate Windows 10 from our PC.
