this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Don't forget to extract the product key before nuking it. For your Windows VM. ๐ฅน
I recently found out that these keys are nowadays embedded in the BIOS. The following command will retrieve it:
sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
This works even if you nuked Windows and installed Linux. Do note that this key will be locked to that particular hardware; you could reinstall Win on that specific computer, but you can't use that key to activate Win on a different machine.
So I did this. I nuked Windows when I bought a new laptop. About a year later I changed jobs and now needed to use Visual Studio. Now I know why Windows never hassled me for a key when I reinstalled...