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XPS 15 9530, No Windows 8.1 Pro key, motherboard change
Hi, guys. Couple of months ago, my wife's Dell XPS 9530 were having some issues with hardware and the technician came over to my wife's office to change the motherboard and I presume to reinstall Windows 8.1 back again. After doing all that, the technician ask my wife to sign a Repair Order Form indicating that she is satisfied with the laptop. Of course, within the form, there is a tick on the NPR form box, meaning that this technician have actually given a DPK card which contains a new Windows 8.1 key to my wife. However, my wife cannot remember whether it was given to her or not and I am sure that the technician did not clearly indicate to her that the DPK card is very important and is needed to re-activate windows again. If he did, my wife would have remembered that and kept the card well. Of course it is my word against the Dell technician. So my questions needed some answers are:
1) Is there any way to ask Dell to retrieve the Windows 8.1 Pro key based on the newly replaced motherboard? The Dell support center I called suggested to me to either buy a new motherboard or a new Windows license, which is really insensitive of them since Dell has already inconvenienced us for having a faulty motherboard!
2) As far as I gather, Windows 8.1 keys are embedded onto the bios. I tried using RWEverything to try to retrieve the key but seemed that this motherboard does not have the MSDM tab which should show the windows key. Using produkey and Belarc yield a result but might be the old motherboard key since I cannot activate. Even using command prompt "wmic path........" successfully execute by the part where it supposed to show the key is blank!!! Is there any other way to retrieve the key or could it be that this motherboard is also faulty that it is missing some components? The thing is, I don't want to just simply buy another windows license because who know when this Dell laptop is going to be obsolete?
Please help. Thanks
jphughan
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March 9th, 2019 06:00
1. No, there is no way to ask Dell to retrieve a product key on a replacement motherboard. There wasn’t even a way to do this when Dell shipped product keys on stickers attached to the system that would occasionally rub off to the point of illegibility.
2. Windows 8.1 keys CAN be embedded into the BIOS, which they often are for systems that shipped with an OEM license, but they can also be distributed on product key cards and through other channels. Dell does not embed Windows product keys into motherboard destined to be replacements. If I had to guess, it could be because they wouldn’t know in advance whether a given replacement should get an 8.1 Home or Pro key and wouldn’t want to delay parts dispatch to do this after an issue arose, and/or because Microsoft might allow them to distribute those key cards expressly for replacements and therefore at no charge to Dell, whereas each BIOS embed is probably treated as a newly sold license.
jphughan
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9 Legend
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14K Posts
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March 9th, 2019 06:00
One more thought in addition to the above: Windows installations typically do NOT fall out of activation after a motherboard swap, so if this happened a few months ago, you’re probably fine. The key is needed for clean installs. However, if you took advantage of the free Windows 10 upgrade while it was available, your Windows 10 license would be digital, i.e. Microsoft’s servers have a record that your system is entitled to run Windows 10. As a result, although you wouldn’t be able to reinstall 8.1 without a product key, you WOULD be able to reinstall Windows 10.
If you did NOT use the free upgrade to Windows 10, then I’ve seen some reports that Microsoft is still allowing it even though it isn’t official policy. In that case, if your Windows 8.1 installation is still shows as activated (check that), then you could try the Win10 upgrade. If it works and activates, now you have a digital license for Win10. If it doesn’t, then you’d need to buy a license, but that leaves you not much worse off than you are now. If you’d prefer to just keep an activated 8.1 installation that you couldn’t reinstall rather than potentially being forced to buy a Win10 license right away, you could capture a system image backup before upgrading. If Win10 requires you to buy a license, you could just restore your system image to get back to where you are right now.