Microsoft offers Windows 10 license for a single computer as well as multiple computers. If you purchased a single PC license and used it on a computer, but now you need to transfer that Windows 10 license to another computer, here is what you need to do. Obviously, you cannot just enter the license key on the second computer to activate that. Obviously, you have to enter that key, but you need to do something before doing such a thing. Therefore, this article will let you know how to move a valid license key from one Windows 10 computer to another. Not only Windows 10 but also you can use the same method to transfer Windows 7/8/8.1 license to another PC.

This tutorial is for them, who have only one license and who do not want to spend money to purchase a second license. Also, you must be fine with a license deactivation on the old PC.

Let’s assume that you have a very old computer and you recently purchased a newly configured PC. After installing Windows 10, you want to activate it with a valid product key. You can purchase a new license, but if you are not going to use the old PC, there is no means to spend money on a new license. Also, you must have the same edition of Windows 10 on both computers. If you have a Home version license and you installed Pro version, you cannot activate that even after having a valid product key.

To get started, you need to deactivate the product key from the old computer. Otherwise, that key won’t be installed on the new computer. This is very easy, and it takes hardly one minute to complete the whole task. The best thing is you do not have to download any third-party software to get it done.

How to Deactivate Old Windows 10 Computer?

As mentioned earlier, you do not need any third-party software, but you have to use the Command Prompt. Therefore, run Command Prompt as administrator first. For that, do a search for CMD in the Taskbar search box, right-click on the corresponding result, and select Run as administrator. After that, enter this command-

slmgr.vbs /cpky

You should be greeted with a message called “Product key from registry cleared successfully.” if you are getting this message, that means you have successfully deactivated your Windows 10 installation on your old computer. In other words, now you can use your existing product key to activate the new Windows 10 computer.

How to Activate New Windows 10 Computer with Existing License?

Again, you have to open the Command Prompt with administrator privilege. After opening Command Prompt as administrator, you need to enter this command-

slmrg.vbs /ipk xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx

You need to replace the xxxx with your valid product key. If everything went right, you should find a success message like “Installed product key xxxx successfully.”

What happens if you do not activate Windows 10?

Every Windows user should activate his/her computer. Otherwise, you may not be able to use all the features of Windows 10. For example, you cannot personalize your computer and so on. No matter what you do, you cannot utilize those user-friendly options in Windows 10 Settings panel.

Also, your computer may restart automatically. That means if you are doing something important, you might lose that. Considering everything, you should install a valid license key on your Windows 10 PC.