Hi,

I have a question re Windows 10 activation and clean installs.  I know the theory that if you do an in-place upgrade from Windows 8.1, you get a new Windows 10 license which is associated to your hardware and Microsoft account.

However, if you started out with an 8.1 with a Microsoft account, and did the in-place upgrade to 10, but with the clean install of Windows 10, you chose that your system was a work machine and joined it to an Office 365 Azure AD account.  You then signed in with the Azure account and not the Microsoft account.  Would your system still activate?  I want to do some test upgrades next week and wondered if anyone knew what would happen with this so I could prepare for it.

Thanks.
A

Hi,

I'm sorry for knew little with Office 365 Azure AD. As far as I know, since Windows 10 was activated after upgrade from Windows 8.1. The license should be work after joined in Azure AD. However, it would be better to contact Office 365 for further assistance with this question.

https://support.office.com/en-za/article/Contact-Office-365-for-business-support-32a17ca7-6fa0-4870-8a8d-e25ba4ccfd4b

Hi,

Thanks for the response.  I can confirm that indeed it does work.  I tried two scenarios and they both work as follows:

Scenario 1 Windows 8.1 with Microsoft account upgraded to 10, clean install of 10 using Azure AD account only.  Windows 10 activated fine with no issues.

Scenario 2 Windows 8.1 using a local account upgraded to Windows 10, no Microsoft account.  System was reinstalled and joined to Azure AD domain, activated fine.

It doesnt seem that the system uses the Microsoft account as part of the activation process, which is good because my Windows 8.1 domain joined PCs dont have a Microsoft account, but we have OEM licenses as we have less than 10 machines, and now 3 of these have been upgraded to Windows 10 using the above process.

Thanks,

Andrew.