I HATE these license of Windows 10 Pro that I bought on the machine, from the Microsoft Store, while I was logged into my Microsoft account.
Is there a any way to can convert or exchange those digital licenses to the old-school fixed xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx type of licenses?
I'm having major headaches re-activating a license on machines where I am going P2V and it was a Store-bought digital license, and I just want plain old style licenses for any remaining machines before I convert them to VMs.
Best Answer
If you bought a retail version of Windows 10, you should have gotten a product key. If you have mislaid it, you need to contact Microsoft with a proof of purchase.
If you instead upgraded to Windows 10 from an activated Windows 7/8/8.1, you will not have a product key. Instead, the PC gets registered on Microsoft activation servers with a digital license (formerly called digital entitlement) that will always be used to activate Windows 10 on that PC.
However, you may link your Microsoft account to that license on your device. This way you may reactivate Windows by using the Activation troubleshooter if you make a hardware change later, such as replacing the motherboard, just by logging into your Microsoft account.
Using a recent Windows 10 release, you can now use the product key from Windows 7/8/8.1 that was previously used to activate Windows on this same device, by going to
Settings > Update & security > Activationand selectingChange Product Key, and you can do this even for a clean install of Windows 10.See the article How to link your Windows 10 product key to a Microsoft account.