It's definitely not always the easiest thing making sure everyone is compliant if you aren't there from the birth of a machine to know what's going on and keep records of everything. I don't have any enterprise or huge customers to worry about, just small businesses and consumers. Pay for the convenience, or take the time and jump through the hoops as you say. Time is money, but I guess that's what interns and Tech 1 are for? It's not really a licensing mess, but rather a question of money. If you want it to be free, though, there are some hoops to jump through. Look at it this way - you can purchase Windows 10 VL Upgrades for each machine and then just put an image on each machine, no problem. I feel sorry for anyone managing a lot of systems that has to jump through these hoops instead of Microsoft just getting their head out of their proverbial licensing's hole and make an app that registers everything without having to perform the full upgrade before larger organizations can image a system with Windows 10. Why they required the full upgrade first in order to register the computer with Windows 10, then the computer is allowed to install a VL image of Windows 10, just makes my head spin. I was just reading a thread on that this morning. The free Windows 10 Upgrade requires that you Upgrade each PC individually to validate licensing. It's well worth the $200 or so to get the license and stay compliant.Īt the moment there is a questionable post in that thread that is being discussed for review, or I would have linked to the thread.Īfter that I upgraded it to Win10, that went fine, That means the factory disk on all, and no kind of imaging. Without volume licensing, OEM is your only option. You can also then get into an image and using that image or deployment on everything.

This will let you use the VL media and key (and I would recommend KMS activation) and not worry about OEM apart from the fact that they're licensed. Since these are all licensed the same (8 Pro), you only require a single VL in order to have reimaging rights on all of them. From another thread, Bryan Doe said it well:įor any kind of reimaging, you must have volume licensing. Volume Licensing allows for use of the VL key on all machines. This is especially true with OEM and activation technologies attempting to use one key on multiple machines. Unless you have at least one Volume License, you are not allowed to use an image you make on one machine and use it on another.

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