I had a little accident the other day: a friend spilled a glass of red wine over my laptop, a three year old Toshiba Satellite C50D-B-10X which came originally with Win 8.1 that was updated to Win 10 two years ago when the update was still free. I tried everything to clean it, even disassembled the mainboard, but no dice, it won’t boot and the keyboard is also malfunctioning. So it’s toast, but my friend’s insurance pays 100 € as time value and my friend gave me additional 50 € out of his own pocket to cover the damage. I’m quite sure that parts of the damaged laptop like the RAM stick and the hard disk are still functional, so I decided to look for the same or at least compatible model as a substitute so I can at least get some use from parts of the old machine.
I found a laptop from the same series, a Toshiba C50D-B-13V on ebay for a good price and ordered it. It’s an unused machine from a return with the original preinstalled Win 8.1. Of course I want it to run Windows 10 because I never liked 8.1 and am used to Win 10, but it’s not in my budget to pay for a license. But I’ve heard many times at this board that Microsoft is lenient with Win 10 activation and that they will still activate it on older machines although we are past the free update period. So two questions:
-
First, when the new laptop arrives, I will swap the hard disks and try to boot the new laptop with the old system drive. This should technically work since both machines share the same mainboard and other hardware, but will the activation for Windows 10 on the old drive subsist on the new machine?
-
If scenario 1 shouldn’t work, will Microsoft activate Win 10 if I update from the preinstalled Win 8.1?
If all else fails, the last I heard Microsoft will still allow you to upgrade to Windows 10 by going to their page for users of assistive technologies. Technically, if you aren’t a user of assistive technologies you aren’t supposed to do this, but Microsoft doesn’t do any actual checking and anyone using Windows 7 or 8 can upgrade to 10.
I doubt if your first idea will work: they are not the same mainboards–they have different serial numbers–and I think the use of different serial numbers is a part of Microsoft’s anti-piracy activities.
An article:
Well thanks for the link, very interesting and probably all I need to know about the subject. To sum it up, you’re right that my first idea won’t work, because my original license was preinstalled and is thus tied to the machine. But at the bottom of the article there was a link to this page, which says that Win 10 can be installed and used without any license key and unactivated; you only have to endure a little nagging watermark on the desktop screen. That’s fine by me, and maybe I’ll later buy a key when my financial situation improves. But I suspect that Microsoft sees luring me to their app store and hoarding my data as more profitable then selling licenses…
This is true, but this page* will give you an activated version, in exchange for a little white lie:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/accessibility/windows10upgrade
- that’s the UK page, but hopefully it will redirect to your region-appropriate one
Well, technically I’ve worn glasses for nearsightedness for almost 40 years and used the Windows screen magnifier and the desktop keyboard two or three times. This should count, shouldn’t it ;)?
You don’t even need the “little white lie” then! 
If you use the magnifier, you legally qualify for the upgrade. So you’re not even lying to get it. 