Will Windows 7 & 8 still reactivate if I install a new motherboard?

[OldGeezer916]

Will Windows 7 & 8 still reactivate if I install a new motherboard?

In the past, if it has been a while since any major hardware changes 7 & 8 would automatically update your genuine activation. Just wondering if this is built into the system or does Microsoft store activations online? If they do I'm sure they would no longer support that. I took both Windows offline, but I still use them for a lot of things. I will NEVER install 10! My computer genius kid custom built me a "user friendly" Linux Ubuntu. My motherboards are still not that old, but none of them last forever. I have video processing programs that I just can't find a Linux program that is as good. Windows is better for large copying jobs & also their file manager is much better.

 

[SIW2]

Should work fine if you have a retail license. If you have a system builder license, you might need to ring ms on the freefone number , hang on till an operator answers, tell them your mobo died and had to be replaced. If they ask how many machines you have it installed on, the correct answer is one.

 

[OldGeezer916]

Originally the Windows 7 was cracked with RemoveWat. I wanted to upgrade to 8, but I could only do that if it was genuine. I bought 2 keys directly from Microsoft. I just uninstalled the crack & clicked to activate. It had me give them my credit card & they emailed me the keys for each machine. I wanted to have both systems because a few programs that worked in 7 wouldn't work in 8. If it is something that you have call Microsoft for, I'm sure you are out of luck. They don't want you using 7 & 8. They were supposed to support 8 until 2023. They forced Intel to not support anything except 10 with the 7th generation CPU. They didn't count on some motherboards that would still work, so they sent out an "update" to brick all future updates if you had 7th generation in 2017. I bought several of the same model motherboard for spares. It's a good thing I made the 7 genuine because I heard they finally broke RemoveWat. Everything is networked together with my Linux machine. The only times I enable my WiFi card is briefly to update programs & then I disable again.



I have already changed motherboards in both machines before & they both immediately activated. Like I said, I don't know if Microsoft has my activation stored on some server or it's just built into the system to let you make a hardware change if it has been long enough since the last one. If it takes them going to the expense of maintaining a server, I guarantee you they won't for versions they don't want you using. They went through too much nagging & even malware type dirty tricks to get everyone on 10.

 

[torchwood]

hi

and as an added bonus, you can still upgrade for free.
NOTE this does NOT delete your W7 keys.

So image your W7, do the free upgrade, then re-install W7

Upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 for Free | Tutorials

Roy

 

[SIW2]

If it is something that you have call Microsoft for, I'm sure you are out of luck.

You are mistaken.
I just recently moved Vista to another machine. I rang MS freefone and they activated it for me, no problem.

 

[OldGeezer916]

SIW2: Vista? That is surprising. Geuss since you already paid for a key. They quit selling keys for 7 & 8 years ago. I tried to buy a key to activate a Windows 7 virtual machine in my Linux & they wouldn't sell one. I asked if I could find a 8 disk. Same thing. I had a friend that had bought a 7 laptop that he wiped right away to install Linux. He gave me his unused key & it worked.


torchwood: I have NO interest in ever upgrading to 10. I read for 10 activations ARE stored by Microsoft. So if I understand what you are saying, you can upgrade to 10 to buy an activation & downgrade to 7 or 8? I thought the free offer was up a long time ago. Guess the cutoff was a scare tactic, but they still want everyone on 10. For one thing they want people to just keep clicking OK & miss a barely visible button to keep defaults. People find their Firefox is now Edge, Google search now Bing etc.



Windows 7 was great compared to anything before. A lot of people were turned off to 8 by that ignorant desktop, but that was easily taken care of with classic shell. There are unseen improvements, but mostly I like the file manager better.



I built my 7 machine with maximum cooling for the video processing programs that peg your CPU out. This barely gets warm. It's kind of noisy with 8 fans!

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[BrainDamage]

OldGeezer: there's a permanent trial option for those of us stuck with an OEM key. When it nags you to activate after 30 days, you can do "slmgr /rearm" to gain another 30 days several times. After that runs out, you have to delete a registry key which is owned by SYSTEM so you have to do it from a boot recovery disk, then the rearm counter is reset to the beginning. No hacking or cracking necessary, but don't do this if your PC didn't come with Windows. Santa will know...

For Linux I like Debian with KDE, I think Ubuntu looks a bit.. tacky

Pro tip for cooling: the bigger the heatsink and the bigger the fans, the less noise they make. There are also PC cases optimized for less noise (I can recommend be quiet!).

 

[OldGeezer916]

BrainDamage:By OEM key do you mean a brand name machine you bought with windows already installed? Last time I did that other than laptops was a Dell in 1999 I never was too happy with. My son taught me to build my own machines. That way when something went bad I didn't have to buy am overpriced proprietary part to fix it.



As for the Ubuntu, my son said it's the best for a Linux newbie like me. It was still a bit above my skill level, so he wrote scripts & programs where I just click an icon instead tapping out command line code the way he does everything. I do hate Dolphin. Give it a really big copy job & it sometimes chokes. It won't even warn you if the destination is not big enough. It has let me accidentally delete files it shouldn't have in programs that are running. I tried a couple other file managers & they were no better. That's one reason I want to keep Windows. So much better file manager. A lot of file work on the Linux machine I can do on the Windows machine networked to it.



I gave my son his first PC for his 4th birthday in 1989. It was only a couple months before he was teaching me. He was writing his own video games at 7. He's 35 now & his programming job has all the benefits & pays WAY more than even Boeing ever gave me. Nice to have my own tech support instead of some guy in India I can't understand that doesn't know a fraction of what he does!

 

[OldGeezer916]

BrainDamage As for the cooling on the CPU, you can see I have the largest Cooler Master fins that will fit in the machine. That came with just one one regular fan. The red fans I put on both sides were the highest volume I could find. So what if it's noisy. Never cracks a sweat running 100% for days on end. I'm converting a lot of files to 265 HEVC. Really saves on disk space & looks just as good. VidCoder is good for that. Use Xillsoft Ultimate for editing, but even though it's supposed to work with HEVC, I have had files not work right.

 

[BrainDamage]

OldGeezer916: Re: OEM: yeah that's what I meant. I also build my own desktop PCs. OEM PCs can also be taken apart, they all have the same components. The biggest problem for me is that you end up paying extra for a too powerful component you don't need b/c no model comes with exactly what you want, and then the OEM reseller slaps on a hefty markup on the price

Ubuntu is good for newbies yeah, there's also Linux Mint which is basically Ubuntu with a bunch of codecs and things like Flash Player (?). Another one I can recommend is Q4OS, that one is acutally as far removed from command line tinkering as you can get with a Linux. Command line is the spirit of Linux tho, I think that's why all the file managers and stuff are always a bit craggy when you want to do something very exact. Power users are expected to learn command line and use rsync and things like that.

Command line is actually very efficient, I was putting off learning it until like 2010, learned programming in C years before I learned to do anything sensible in the command line actually, but it comes in handy so much. E.g. I encode videos with ffmpeg nowadays, earlier I actually had a massive Autohotkey script which selected the right file and clicked all the right buttons X times in a row in a normal video encoder program. But yeah when the OS depends on users using command line it definitely leaves a bit of a half-finished touch. I love Linux but gotta admit I'm typing this on Win7

 

[OldGeezer916]

BrainDamage: All I know my son set my Ubuntu up so I don't do anything command line. I do have Flash player installed & get updates for it, but in Firefox I have to click to give it permission to use it. The only time I use command line is try to install things that don't come with the Ubuntu software center. A lot of the time when I go to the geek sites they are talking way over my head. I paste in command lines & sometimes it works & other times not. My biggest complaint is, why can't Linux just have an exe file you download to install things like in Windows? Everything is sudo this & that. Sometimes nothing happens & other times something installs but I can't figure out what it is or how to use it. Usually it's only a meg or two & I can't figure out how to uninstall it, so I just leave it. Some Windows programs like Jdownloader are compatible with Linux, but my son had to put in an extra file so it will bring it up. Some programs like my cloning program, Sysclone, you normally would have to type in code to bring up a basic GUI that runs in a Konsole, but he just made some kind of script & I just click an icon.


My question is, how do you use Windows 7 & 8 safely with no security updates? I keep Firefox current, but I don't do any browsing with it. Sometimes to update a program I have to bring a web page. As soon as I'm done, I disable my WIFI. Window 8 would still get updates if I had an old processor. Here's what Microsoft says about it:

 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4012982/the-processor-is-not-supported-together-with-the-windows-version-that

Their solution: Install Windows 10 if you have a Kaby Lake CPU. They even tried to pull the same crap for 6th generation, but they got so many complaints they backed off that. I'm just not going install that spyware. In the "privacy" policy they have permission to search your private folders & even rat you out to law enforcement. They finally had to admit that even if you turn everything off, 10 is still sending them a LOT of information.

 

[OldGeezer916]

townsbg You can do like I do & have the best of both. I took my Windows 7 & 8 offline & networked to an online Ubuntu. Lot of free software with Linux as good or better than Windows programs. Things like Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, Jdownloader, VLC work fine on it. Some Windows programs important to me don't have Linux versions & I can't find anything as good. I can't get any security updates even for my 8 so it's just not safe to go on line with. I can run either machine from the other & I have a KVM for a quick swap back & forth. I'll never go with 10 because their privacy policy says they can snoop through everything. If you have software they don't think you should have, they can turn you in. Linux has always been more secure than Windows even when I could still get Windows updates. My son customized my Linux to be "user friendly" to a newbie. No typing code. The sheep are all going to 10, but some of us say hell no!