I posted this on reddit but didn't get much help yet. Honestly I'm not sure if this is an issue or not. Here's the story... Last week I built a brand new computer. Now I have 2 desktop computers. Built the new one so my daughter could use the other one (which is still a beast PC) and finally play Minecraft without lag every step or 2. My old PC was originally a Dell purchase. It came with windows 7. Over the years I added parts to it to make it better. Even used the free Windows 10 upgrade and loved it. Eventually I needed to upgrade the motherboard to add better parts and thus needed to buy a new Windows key since to MS, a new motherboard is a new PC. Personally I think that's a silly reason but that's a discussion for another day. So I bought a retail copy of Windows 10 from the MS store specifically so I could install it on any PC regardless of upgrades in the future. Now when I built my new PC, I deactivated the retail key on my old PC so that I could install the OS on the new one. I figured I could just re-install Windows 7 back on the old one since it's still a valid key. They both installed fine and both said activated. The PC with Windows 7 though was not working right with other software so I decided to buy another retail copy of Win10 so that her PC was up to date and safer. So while waiting for the new key to arrive (was purchased from Amazon) I installed Windows 10 back on the old knowing that I could just enter the new key when it arrived. The thing is, after I installed it back on the old PC it said that Windows 10 was successfully activated. So here I have my new PC and old PC both running Windows 10 and both say they are activated. How can this be if they both at one point used the same retail key? Could the old PC be remembering the key generated from the free Windows 10 upgrade maybe and that is still usable? Bottom line is if I don't need the new key I just ordered I want to return it but I also want to make sure that both PCs have legit Windows 10 copies. Surely one of them would have given errors if they were not both legit right? Send help please!
I believe your assumptions are correct. The old computer probably used the prior Win10 key from when you originally upgraded from 7 to 10, and now your new computer is using the Win10 key you purchased. You should be able to easily verify that each PC is using two different keys just by going into your Control Panel, then clicking on System. Windows activation key should be at the bottom of that window, and both PCs should have different keys.
Thanks I will verify that when I get home. They are both activated already that was the odd thing about this. I only bought one key. But might be the free Win10 upgrade.
