shouldn’t need to worry about a windows product key if 10 or 11 was previously activated on the system and no significant changes were made to its internal hardware (like motherboard or nic). activation servers retain activation state and hardware hash, and that state is restored on reinstall. just choose ‘i don’t have a key’ when prompted during install and when windows is back it will automagically reactivate itself.
Comment on It always seems like its time to move to linux
realitista@lemm.ee 6 days agoThis was also on my work machine. I had to use some utilities to extract my windows key and change some stuff in the bios to disable bitlocker, so it was not a small job but it’s increased my productivity a lot.
adarza@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
realitista@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Interesting. I thought that since I completely wiped the disk and removed all bitlocker that it would be an issue.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 6 days ago
I know the Rufus software.
So you’re saying you installed windows from a selfmade installation medium, that you further had to massage, without internet connection? That’s not really an option on our work laptops.
I actually also did this to some machines; I gave them to their respective owners right away so I don’t know if they have no ads.
realitista@lemm.ee 6 days ago
Yes fortunately I had the bios password, so I was able to manage it. I work remotely. To IT it just looks like the machine vanished. They haven’t asked me about it.
Anivia@feddit.org 6 days ago
You know this is more than enough reason to fire you once your IT department finds out
realitista@lemm.ee 6 days ago
Been here more than 20 years and my whole department does it. The computers are unusable otherwise. If I were sitting in an office it wouldn’t be possible, but they have a BYOD policy which allows for this kind of use.