In at least two help pages, Microsoft explains that a Windows 10 license can be linked to a Microsoft account, allowing it to be easily moved between computers:
According to this documentation, this is the case when the Windows activation settings display the following message:
Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account.
Apparently, this is a new feature that was introduced in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
I would like to know if there is any way to manage this link between the digital license and the Microsoft account. Specifically, I would like to:
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See which Microsoft account the license is linked to. I have two users set up on this computer and they are linked to different Microsoft accounts. After checking the activation settings, I realized that the license on that computer was automatically bound to some Microsoft account at some point, but it's not telling me which account it has been bound to. (Is it possible that it is linked to both accounts at the same time?)
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Unlink the license from a Microsoft account, and possibly re-link it to a different account. This would be useful if I want to give away or sell my computer, for example.
Best Answer
This is an answer to your first question: See which Microsoft account the license is linked to.
There is no direct way to show to which account a digital license is bound to. The account device list of the Microsoft account cannot be trusted: If I add another (non admin) user with a Microsoft account to my machine, the name of the computer will be added in the device list of the new account, too. Certainly, the digital license of my computer is still bound to my (admin) account and not to the new user.
Therfore you have to check the list of digital licenses in every Microsoft account you own.
The only method I know to list digital licenses bound to a Microsoft account is to try to transfer them to a new, "unknown" hardware. "Unknown" means, that on this hardware Windows 10 has not been installed before. "Try" means just to begin the transfer process until the last step and not to finish the activation process.
This new, "unknown" hardware can be a real hardware (new mainboard) or a virtual hardware (e.g. VMware virtual machine). It's important to note that the fingerprint of this hardware shall not exist in the database of Micrsoft's activation servers. Otherwise the hardware will be activated automatically and you won't get a chance to transfer a different digital license to it because it already has a digital license. The transfer process won't get offered.
My method for Windows 10 b1607 is as follows:
This whole process seems to be reliable in respect to list my own digital licenses which I bound to different Microsoft accounts. However, some devices of the second list ("We can't reactivate Windows from these devices" ) migrated after some days to the first list ("devices which can be activated"). But this does not matter as the device entries stay the same.
And of course there is no guarantee that devices which are shown in the first list can be reactivated with the device with which you are currently checking the license. E.g. when I check with my virtual machine I also get some digital licenses in the first list which belong to a different device class (e.g. standalone PC). I am sure that a transfer from a license like this to a VM would not work in reality.