Windows 10 Pro Licenses

[Sayf777]

Hey guys,

Are those cheap win 10 pro licenses sold on bidorbuy genuine and not stolen?

I've bought and activated it and all seems fine.

 

[zaid26]

You get oem licenses : https://www.kinguin.net

 

[CataclysmZA]

It depends on where they come from. The OEM licenses seem to be excess that gets sold off by employees of the OEM brands to third parties, who put those licenses up on sale.

The alternative sources are MSDN and BrightSpark subscriptions, where you get 10 individual licenses per subscription. Those get sold off and labeled as DSP licenses, and they're always at risk of being blacklisted from Microsoft's servers.

 

[Sayf777]

So is there any way to find out if I phone Microsoft?

What do I ask?

Thanks for the replies.

 

[airborne]

They may be oem licenses, maybe taken from junked towers from Dell/hp etc.

Also may even be stealing the licenses from some kind of enterprise situation where the license supplied with a machine is never activated or never used so essentially your activation of the licence may be legitimate from the viewpoint of being a virgin activation, what transpires a few years down the line is another thing all together though.

I'd also like the conclusive answer though.

You can also find all these licenses incl Office etc on EBay.co.uk for way less than Bidorbuy. Bidorbuy guys are probably buying from ebay and then reselling them for a good 500% profit, from what I have seen.

 

[Sayf777]

I've phoned and Microsoft told me it's not stolen just taken from junked towers as u said. If I understood them correctly.
They also said they'll be issues activating them which I doubt.

 

[airborne]

I've phoned and Microsoft told me it's not stolen just taken from junked towers as u said. If I understood them correctly.
They also said they'll be issues activating them which I doubt.

Did they check the actual install serial you have?

The qualification could be in the serial code somewhere, whether it's retail/dsp/oem or they will have flagged a certain range of serials as oem etc

There may be issues if the guy who sold you the license resells the serial key more than once or if you need to activate via phone and don't answer the questions correctly.

You can be 100% sure the code is not a legitimate retail key and almost certainly not a virgin dsp key, probably 2nhd dsp or oem.

Or stolen from enterprise machines that never are activated, physically copying the key off the tower(although that's not possible with Windows 10 with no Coa, serial in the bios?), well that's one of my theories.

Does Windows 10 dsp and oem have a Coa sticker with the install serial on it, I thought it was inserted into the bios on oem but that wouldn't be possible on dsp?

 

[sajunky]

I've phoned and Microsoft told me it's not stolen just taken from junked towers as u said. If I understood them correctly.
They also said they'll be issues activating them which I doubt.

They lie. They are dumping market with cheap licences, so they get more Windows 10 machines mining Bitcoins for Microsoft.

 

[Dan C]

They lie. They are dumping market with cheap licences, so they get more Windows 10 machines mining Bitcoins for Microsoft.

Probably right. I bought 3 cheap ones and the last update seemed dodgy.

 

[AndyC]

At one point my IT department used to buy Dell boxes exclusively. They each came preloaded with Windows 7 Pro and the license keys stuck to each box. We have an Enterprise license that covers the entire organisation. The IT procurement guy would take the licenses keys off the boxes and carefully stash them away for a nice payday.

At the time he was selling these things for slightly less than full value online and making some decent drinking money.

 

[Adrianax]

I have bought a few of these 'licenses' on eBay, BoB and elsewhere, some selling them for US$3. All of them worked perfectly. All the machines still run updates 2 years later. The same for the Office Pro packages. No issues.

 

[ToxicBunny]

At one point my IT department used to buy Dell boxes exclusively. They each came preloaded with Windows 7 Pro and the license keys stuck to each box. We have an Enterprise license that covers the entire organisation. The IT procurement guy would take the licenses keys off the boxes and carefully stash them away for a nice payday.

At the time he was selling these things for slightly less than full value online and making some decent drinking money.

I'm guessing someone got fired for that eventually...

Both for buying Dell machines with licenses and also for selling company property illegally

 

[ponder]

I'm guessing someone got fired for that eventually...

Both for buying Dell machines with licenses and also for selling company property illegally

Maybe he was told to throw them away. PCs should never have been purchased with licenses though.

 

[CataclysmZA]

I've phoned and Microsoft told me it's not stolen just taken from junked towers as u said. If I understood them correctly.
They also said they'll be issues activating them which I doubt.

You can install Windows 10 using a generic key, use your Microsoft to sign into the OS, and then activate it with the key you bought. That then gives you a perpetual license key tied to your account and not the OS itself, and the key allocated to your account is different.

That's how some people are using these DSP keys for Windows 7 and 8.1 to install Windows 10 and get a genuine license attached to their account.

Does Windows 10 dsp and oem have a Coa sticker with the install serial on it, I thought it was inserted into the bios on oem but that wouldn't be possible on dsp?

The COA stickers no longer come with a license key. The key itself isn't inserted in anymore for OEM machines like they did for Windows 8. Instead it's a SLP key that activates Windows for OEMs. It's the same process that previously worked for activating Windows 7 using those loaders.

Both for buying Dell machines with licenses and also for selling company property illegally

Maybe he was told to throw them away. PCs should never have been purchased with licenses though.

To this day, if you want to upgrade a retail or OEM machine to a volume licensed version of Windows, you need to buy a qualifying version pre-installed on the machine and upgrade it from there. If you're moving from Pro to volume licensed Pro or Enterprise, you need to buy that machine with the license first.

Clean installing the licensed version of Windows without the pre-installed copy is a violation of the agreement that companies sign when taking up a volume license.

 

[ponder]

You can install Windows 10 using a generic key, use your Microsoft to sign into the OS, and then activate it with the key you bought. That then gives you a perpetual license key tied to your account and not the OS itself, and the key allocated to your account is different.

That's how some people are using these DSP keys for Windows 7 and 8.1 to install Windows 10 and get a genuine license attached to their account.



The COA stickers no longer come with a license key. The key itself isn't inserted in anymore for OEM machines like they did for Windows 8. Instead it's a SLP key that activates Windows for OEMs. It's the same process that previously worked for activating Windows 7 using those loaders.





To this day, if you want to upgrade a retail or OEM machine to a volume licensed version of Windows, you need to buy a qualifying version pre-installed on the machine and upgrade it from there. If you're moving from Pro to volume licensed Pro or Enterprise, you need to buy that machine with the license first.

Clean installing the licensed version of Windows without the pre-installed copy is a violation of the agreement that companies sign when taking up a volume license.

Thinking back now you are correct. Company ordered thousands of desktops each year and they came with the normal windows sticker on the side, they were then reimaged over the network with a few standard builds.