Title pretty much says it all.
If you have Win 7 OEM Pro installed and also have a legit key for Win 7 Retail Pro, can you change to Retail without a reinstall, by just changing keys.
What's the procedure? Phone call to MS? Formal deactivation?
You should be able to just change the key at Control Panel>System. It may activate online or you may need to do the phone call to assure the robot that only one copy (if that's all that came with the license, e.g. isn't MSDN) is installed. This gives MS activation permission to deactivate on any other previous PC it was installed upon and replace that with the present hardware signature represented by the series of numbers.
Only if it is retail Upgrade version would you need to do the quick Option 3 workaround in Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version
If the link is not present to Change Product Key then you can use SLMgr Commands and Options
Glad to help.
They should keep in mind if retail or Factory OEM it is already tied to that hardware so they'd be wasting a license to reinstall to same hardware with retail Full or Upgrade. I'm assuming they want to move an OEM license to a PC which needs a new license to avoid being deactivated due to changed mobo.
But we do get reports that MS will allow mobo changes now on retail OEM, and I have seen a half dozen reports in recent years of the same happening for Factory OEM which quite frankly puzzled me. So that might be worth a try first as well.
I'm not sure, but I think their idea is to move to Pro 7 retail so they can then qualify for a "retail" Pro Win 10 via free upgrade--and thereby presumably be able to change motherboards and do total rebuilds at will on into the future, as you can now with a 7 retail license.
We don't yet know that there will be restrictions to same mobo for OEM version Upgrades to Windows 10 just as there are not for Upgrades from XP or Vista to 7. This will all be plumbed after release as it was here for Windows 7.
Either way they can install TP and get a free Upgrade from that which will not be OEM-specific.
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