I have a few laptops, all of them are the same specs except for a few with a different GPU. All of them run the exact same software. I'm planning to upgrade them all manually to 10 first to register the machine, then create an image so in case a drive goes belly up, I'll just restore it from the image created instead of installing all the software one by one. I'm going to take one machine, sysprep it then keep a copy of that image for restoring on to the other machines.
In this case would it just reactivate properly on the newly cloned machine?
Hi there
SYSPREP should work - but you still will need a licence (or Free upgrade) for each machine you install W10 on. If you have a VL (Volume licence) -- no problems - but you aren't allowed to clone several machines from just ONE Windows Licence unless it's a VL or multiple activation version.
If the old machines had valid Windows licences then activation should in theory work on the machines -- just try it on a second machine and see before you SYSPREP the rest of them. Observe the legal requirements though.
Cheers
jimbo
Keep us updated. I'd guess yes, too, but I'd like to know how it turns out.
(I'm assuming that each upgrade installed correctly with it's previous
version of Windows activating the upgrade to Windows 10, right?)
All the machines have OEM 7 Pro, which I will first manually do an 10 Pro upgrade to get Microsoft to save the hardware hash, hence all of them will be on a clean genuine 10 Pro. My question is if one drive gives, can I just take an image from one of them and let it re-activate, or will there be hardware hash clashes. I just don't want to go through the pain of rebuilding it from scratch one by one.Hi there
SYSPREP should work - but you still will need a licence (or Free upgrade) for each machine you install W10 on. If you have a VL (Volume licence) -- no problems - but you aren't allowed to clone several machines from just ONE Windows Licence unless it's a VL or multiple activation version.
If the old machines had valid Windows licences then activation should in theory work on the machines -- just try it on a second machine and see before you SYSPREP the rest of them. Observe the legal requirements though.
Cheers
jimbo
I think it would detect that the hardware hash was different and try to reactivate which should pass since the current hardware hash on that machine would have already been activated. I don't think there would be an issue.
If there was an issue you could simply force reactivation once you'd overwritten the current installation with your image at command prompt:
slmgr /ato
The slmgr.vbs -ato trick worked. I further tweaked the process by generating the GenuineTicket.xml, on a barebones WIndows 7 SLP install (the machines all have a 7 COA), then after cloning, did the manual activation. Works brilliantly, now I don't even have to go through installing 7 and 10 multiple times.I think it would detect that the hardware hash was different and try to reactivate which should pass since the current hardware hash on that machine would have already been activated. I don't think there would be an issue.
If there was an issue you could simply force reactivation once you'd overwritten the current installation with your image at command prompt:
slmgr /ato
And I would assume in future upgrades I can skip dropping the XML, since it's already activated once with Microsoft as a 7 upgrade.
