Without Product Key How To Activate Windows 10

[Lorin Cupples]

MyWindows 10 is not activated. That is why I cannot auto-hide a taskbar :-( It is annoying because it covers the space I need and distracts my attention. Please, help me auto-hide the taskbar without activating my Windows. Do not suggest buying anything, please.

I saw a previous post How to activate the free Windows 10 upgrade without actually using it? but my question is a little different. I have upgraded Windows 10 on several PCs and subsequently reinstalling them clean with Windows 10. So I am sure I can replace the HDD, reinstall Windows 7 using my original Windows 7 key and activate Windows 10.

But that is half day worth of work. I wonder if there is an easier way to activate my PC with Windows 10 without actually installing Windows 10 on it, not even on a separate HDD. I also don't want to mess up my PC by allowing Windows 10 to upgrade in-place and then downgrade back to Windows 7.

Hi Don,

Activating Windows on the reference VM has no bearing on whether it will activate on the target PC. The Sysprep\Generalize process which runs on every image at deployment time strips out any existing license info from the image. SmartDeploy provides two opportunities to enter a Windows product key - either in Capture Wizard (in which case it is hashed and written into the metadata of the image to be used at deployment time), or in Deploy Wizard (in which case it is written into the Sysprep Unattend.xml to be used at deployment time). If you do not provide a Windows product key at one of these times, then we cannot guarantee that the target device will activate.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at support (at) smartdeploy.com

Hi Don,

OEM licenses do not include reimaging rights from Microsoft. We have had some customers report success with such licenses, but it is inconsistent and unreliable (by design), as the license is only intended to be used to revert the device back to its original factory image. SmartDeploy has no interaction with this process, so we have no control over whether or not Microsoft allows the device to activate if you do not provide a license key for us to pass through at deployment time. Our recommendation is to look into getting a volume license. We are not a volume license reseller, but we can put you in touch with one - go ahead and email us and we can send you their info.

Regards,

Glenn

As Support mentioned, volume licensing is the correct way to go about this. But we've had luck pulling the OEM key from BIOS using something like ShowKeyPlus, then activating with that key. There are ways to automate this with a PS script.

I ran into this issue as well. If you have a digital license key which you most likely do then you need to get an ISO for windows 10 and reinstall the OS, this will reactivate windows. Fully complete the initial "out-of-box" set up while connected to the internet (so it can connect to the Microsoft servers and activate the digital license). When you get to the desktop for the first time is when your digital key will be activated, you don't need to worry about preforming all of the windows updates before you image. From there you can go ahead and image it. I would recommend setting your answer file to shutdown rather than restart after the image is complete. Make sure when you power the PC back on it is connected to the internet via ethernet cable or the digital key will not activate.

I have deployed 50 OEM Windows 10 machines without a VL. What I noticed is that a few machines were activated immediately, whereas others had to be online for anywhere from 24-72 hours before they would activate. But everyone of them did eventually activate with the OEM license.

My apologies, I have been on other projects and never returned to this topic. I know this is a very late reply, but the answer is no. I did not put the product key in the deploy wizard. That said, I have had the best success when the newly imaged computer is started for the first time with an active LAN connection (ethernet) rather than WiFi. My total deployments now are around 64, including re-imaging a few machines after employee turnover. I still have not had a single one fail to activate.

I have tried ShowWindow(second.handle, SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE), but the mainform loses focus.If I set Visible := false on the second window, the call to ShowWindow does not activate the second form, but the windows is empty when shown...

If possible, you should considered using some sort of tool tip window to display the notification information. A tool tip will not steal focus from you main window when it is displayed or when a user clicks on it. A regular form will have a border by default and if the user clicks on that border your main form will loose focus.

I am using the code for a transparent overlay form which is created dyamically. The following code is a combination of the given answers and places the second form without activation over the parent form.

The reason is that I use a software where tools are activate per window. In certain situation the draw tool might be selected in a window that is currently inactive, and when re-activating that window with a mouse click, it would also draw an event in the window depending on where the mouse cursor is. Only way to prevent it is to click the window title bar.

What I would ideally want to do is to not have to first click the window title bar to activate i, and then select a tool. Instead, I'd like to use a macro that activates the window under the mouse cursor (without clicking) and selecting the tool for me.

Start by complaining to the app Devs -- clicking on an inactive window should only activate it, not do something in it (the clue's in the word "inactive" ). Sounds like a bad port of Windows software, but I doubt they'll do anything about it.

So something that'll activate the window the pointer is over... That'll depend on Nuendo returning a sensible result when you ask about its windows. Can you try the following (you'll need to set an hotkey trigger) with a Nuendo frontmost and some windows open and let us know the resulting text and how many windows there were?

Nuendo consist of several independent framed window's containing titles. These can be recognized, and I'm using the "Front Window of Front Application" condition to do several things, like choosing the proper tools, etc. So all application window's can be recognized by it's title.

I'm always using two monitors. They are always set up in the same way, but because I have workstations in several places around (where I have different equipment) the resolution of the screens are not always the same. I can set up the different workspaces so that the window in question will always have the same placement related to the top-left corner if that helps window's recognition.

The main window is called the "Project Window" and the title of that window always has the name "Nuendo Project - [project name]". I'm using the "Title Contains" condition to identify that window, and that works without issues.

I've tried fixing this in the following way: When the keyboard shortcut for a tool is pressed in Window 1, it will quickly switch to Window 2 as well and select the same tool there, and then switch back. That works "ok", except that I can't type anything in Window 1, since the tools are selected with shortcuts P and T. So I've given up on that for now.

In other DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation software), if I were to just hoover the mouse over one window and press "P", that would selected the pen tool of that window. That is not the case in Nuendo. The Window needs to be active for the shortcut to work.

A suggested solution would be: When I press "P" or "T", Keyboard Maestro would recognize which window is under the mouse cursor, then activate that window, without me having to press the title bar, then sending the shortcut for the tool to that window.

As you've already seen, a single-key hotkey trigger like "P" or "T" is generally A Bad Idea -- it's difficult, if not impossible, to replicate an app's "is this typed text or a shortcut?" decision-making process.

You should probably look to using menu items rather than keystrokes to activate the tools, if only to avoid the situation where the pointer is over a window that already has the insertion point in a text field. Running the macro in that case would bring the window to the front and type into the field -- probably not want you want.

I'm a new Mac user, having been issued with a MacBook Pro when I started a new job three months ago. A Windows and Linux user before, I'm now getting quite used to the differences with using Apple's desktop environment.

For example, if I have two browser windows open side by side with the left one active, it takes two clicks to follow a link in the right hand window: one to make the window active, one to click the link.

A similar issue is trying to copy and paste text between windows. I can select and copy text in an active terminal or editor, then paste it into another with 'right-click, Paste' but that doesn't activate the window. I still need to left-click the window to activate it before I can type into it.

In Windows and Linux, the right-click to paste would also activate the window. If I was pasting a command into a terminal, I could then just hit Enter to run it, whereas an extra mouse click is required on my Mac. This feels a little cumbersome.

You can set it up so focus-follows-mouse is the default system behavior and you will get what you're looking for. I was frustrated with this too, coming from Windows. However, I've been using this for the past 3 months and honestly I'd go crazy without it now. Highly recommend it.

On Windows and Linux, quite everything which is relevant to a window, to its underlying application, is enclosed within the subject window. Prime example: the menu bar, which is in the window. On macOS, the active window finds its menu bar on top of the screen, not in the window (except a few old oddities), an active process could possibly impact or be acknowledged outside its representative window.

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