Windows 11 OEM license transfer to a new hard drive

[naednek]

I don't have a recovery partition or disk. My son's HP machine is having issues, we bought a new SSD with the hopes of reinstalling Win11 on the new drive. How do I go about transferring the license. MS is telling me I have to contact the vendor. I tried, I'm out of warranty, I can only talk to the community and I'm having a fun time trying to get that info from their forums.

Hoping to do this Saturday morning. Can someone help out. Gone are the days of digital keys

[naednek]

So what I'm reading is I have an OEM license and those are not transferrable. WTF

[Isgrimnur]

Check the case for a sticker with the key on it.

[LordMortis]

So what I'm reading is I have an OEM license and those are not transferrable. WTF

That sounds correct. It's not just an OEM license, which is what you get when you buy from an independent builder but it is a bulk OEM license tied to a specific vendor coded on the MoBo. That license is usually tied to the BIOS (or whatever they call it nowadays).

What model of HP do you have? I know with Dell and Lenovo, you can get a one time download of installation media, so long as the machine isn't too old, irrespective of warranty.

HP seem to suggest you can use Media Creation tool

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/i ... 6795641-16

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... c3b507420d

But it's hard to say, I know I've replaced the install partition on a Dell with another Dell drive with a Dell installation media that was supposed to just work and they still had to send a tech onsite to reconfigure the BIOS.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I don't have a recovery partition or disk. My son's HP machine is having issues, we bought a new SSD with the hopes of reinstalling Win11 on the new drive. How do I go about transferring the license. MS is telling me I have to contact the vendor. I tried, I'm out of warranty, I can only talk to the community and I'm having a fun time trying to get that info from their forums.

Hoping to do this Saturday morning. Can someone help out. Gone are the days of digital keys

I'd suggest using the free and open source Clonezilla to simply clone the old drive to the newer SSD, as explained by Tom's Hardware below:

How To Clone Your SSD or Hard Drive

If you wish to perform a clean install that includes all required drivers and utilities for your OEM system, the simplest and easiest option is to download a recovery image for your system directly from your OEM. So for HP, this means using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool to create a bootable recovery USB flash drive (minimum 32 GB) that will then allow you to perform an HP System Recovery, i.e. a clean installation with all required HP drivers and utilities:

[Blackhawk]

No, OEMs don't transfer, but, as mentioned, they're tied to the motherboard, not the drive. You can download the installer for free from Microsoft, and what normally happens is that the activation process will ID the specific motherboard and automatically activate the license (IE - your motherboard has a unique ID that's connected with the license on MS's servers.) I have never owned an HP, so I don't know if it works that way with theirs (I'd think so - Windows activation is handled by MS, not the builders), but if you yank the old drive, put the new one in, install Windows and find that it doesn't work, you can always put the old drive back in and try a different method.

The whole process shouldn't take more than an hour or so.

[LordMortis]

if you yank the old drive, put the new one in, install Windows and find that it doesn't work, you can always put the old drive back in and try a different method.

That is my initial thunk. I probably should have spelled it out. I guess I was waiting to hear what the model was to see if there was more info.

[naednek]

thank you. That's what I had thought. That it was tied to the motherboard and why would it matter if I changed hard drives. I'll have to check on any labels.

[Blackhawk]

thank you. That's what I had thought. That it was tied to the motherboard and why would it matter if I changed hard drives. I'll have to check on any labels.

It won't be printed anywhere (at least most places haven't done that in a long time.) Your mobo has a chip with a unique identifier that's connected to the code. When you reinstall Windows, Microsoft asks the motherboard for the identifier. If it matches, and you haven't changed too much hardware (a drive wouldn't matter), it simply activates it.

It is theoretically possible to find your Windows code, but it involves all sorts of command promptery, and, in the end, it'll still be activated by the motherboard chip anyway.

[naednek]

Thanks all for the help. AB I watched your video and that's what HP said to do, but that's not what I was trying to do. I didn't want to recover, I wanted to install a new Win 11 instance on another drive or transfer. I learned I couldn't transfer an OEM, but because I was only installing it on a different hard drive, it still activated because the motherboard didn't change. Thank you, BH for reaffirming.

Just to make sure I didn't mess anything up, I took out the 2 hard drives that were already there and put in the new hard drive to install the OS to. Got that set up, and then I reinstalled the two drives. The plan was to have Ethan transfer anything he wanted from the old OS drive before reformatting. But when I booted it up after all the parts were in, the two drives were somehow encrypted by Bitlocker. Ethan claims he didn't enable it, and I know I didn't.

Had to figure out how to get the key, and found that it stores it to your online MS account, so the crisis was averted. Otherwise, we'd have to reformat.

The system seems to be working much better. Told him to test.

My daughter desperately needs a new PC and we were thinking of maybe giving her his PC and Ethan getting a more powerful one as my daughter only plays Roblox. He seems to be content with what he has, but he's not forward-thinking. If we give Lila the new PC from what I found it would be overkill.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Thanks all for the help. AB I watched your video and that's what HP said to do, but that's not what I was trying to do. I didn't want to recover, I wanted to install a new Win 11 instance on another drive or transfer.

Just to clarify, HP refers to it as performing an 'HP System Recovery.' But what this equates to = installing a new, clean pre-activated OEM version of Windows + all required drivers and utilities for your OEM system. So, it's a 'System Recovery' insomuch as it wipes your selected destination drive, reinstalls Windows, and restores or 'recovers' it to the original factory condition. So it does, in fact, install a new OEM version of Windows to whichever drive you select.

[naednek]

Thanks all for the help. AB I watched your video and that's what HP said to do, but that's not what I was trying to do. I didn't want to recover, I wanted to install a new Win 11 instance on another drive or transfer.

Just to clarify, HP refers to it as performing an 'HP System Recovery.' But what this equates to = installing a new, clean pre-activated OEM version of Windows + all required drivers and utilities for your OEM system. So, it's a 'System Recovery' insomuch as it wipes your selected destination drive, reinstalls Windows, and restores or 'recovers' it to the original factory condition. So it does, in fact, install a new OEM version of Windows to whichever drive you select.

Ok. The video showed each screen and it said it would install on the drive the OS was already on. It didn't mention anything about selecting a different disk. I didn't want to overwrite the disc until I knew a solution worked. I appreciate the help.

[Blackhawk]

There is also the question of whether you just want Windows, or all of the sponsored HP crap that they'd likely install alongside it.

[Anonymous Bosch]

There is also the question of whether you just want Windows, or all of the sponsored HP crap that they'd likely install alongside it.

Perhaps, but my intent here was to simplify the process of how to go about installing a fresh OEM version of Windows -- to an existing drive, or an entirely new one -- rather than overcomplicate by delving into the more subjective topic of Windows debloatification.