I had previously activated Build 11102 on this vm, let Windows Update download the build upgrade, created a Build 14251 ISO image and clean installed on top of the previous build without entering the product key. First the latest Build 14251 on a Hyper-V virtual machine, clean installed. You can reinstall Windows 10 on that same machine without entering a product key because when online, Windows contacts those servers and checks that the machine has a so called digital entitlement to be activated. When you activate Windows 10 on any machine (again: a real one or a vm), the ID and signature of that machine will be stored on Microsoft activation servers. In other words you need to buy a Windows 10 license for the vm.Īll Windows computers, be it a real physical PC or a virtual machine have a unique ID and signature. Whatever build you will install on a new vm, you will need a valid product key to activate it.

If I install a copy on the VM using the 10586 ISO I recently downloaded, will that possibly invalidate my licence? I'm assuming that the VM won't look like it's running on my physical machine, so it won't look like I've just clean installed Windows on the same hardware: if it looks like different hardware, will the activation (assuming I can't just put it off for 30 days or something) just fail, or could it revoke the real machine's licence?įirst the bad news, then an explanation: There's absolutely nothing ¹ you can do to save your Insider activation for that deleted vm.

From what I've seen, the licence doesn't allow me to do that with my upgraded (from 7) copy, and I've seen the FAQ here that, if I understand it properly, suggests that I would need to reinstall the same version of the preview that I'd originally activated. I also deleted the downloaded preview ISO. After release I upgraded my machine and deleted the VM. I was also signed in to the insider program. Before Win10 released I was running a copy of the preview on a virtual machine.

Create windows 10 vm