Solved My PC is activated with my ms account, but it has disappeared from the list on line management of devices

Winuser · Feb 5, 2024

I just checked my MS Account. I have 5 devices listed and 10 devices listed as being linked to the MS store. One devices is a Windows 11 Home VM. When I'm more awake I'll check what devices I don't need linked to the MS Store and remove them.

sdowney717 · Feb 5, 2024

Everyone, if you want to see the Microsoft passwords in your EDGE browser, search for 'live'
I found my wife's password for the PC. So I will just leave it as is.

sdowney717 · Feb 5, 2024

Bree said:
Tell me about it! I have just twice needed to reactivate after a hardware change and needed to make use of my MS account to do so.

The first was in 2021 when I tried to move all of my activated VMs from my old host machine to a new one. All bar one of them remained activated, but for one, a W11 Home VM with TPM enabled, it would not activate on the new 'virtual' hardware.

Inadvertently created a Hyper-V Shielded VM - Windows 10 Help Forums - post#14

The second time was to transfer a digital licence for Pro from an old laptop with a failing screen to another one I'd bought as a replacement. I swapped the old machine's HDD into the new one, then swapped over the digital licence using the Activation Troubleshooter, telling it that I had recently changed the hardware on this device.

Lost Activation win11 pro - posts #92 & #93

Nice, I just bought another Lattitude laptop, nice one with better cpu and memory than stock with an m.2 sata drive and it has win10 pro on it. Will get it next week.
I plan to pull the NVME drive from the dead ASUS, and put it in the latitude 5580, so will do like you did and it should activate.
Same with me, my Asus Q525ua screen broke, and I tried to fix it and broke the new digitizer, so it is never going to work again...

First though I think I will upgrade to win11 and log it into my online account. I dont; know if it is OEM or retail OS version of 10 pro
I don't want to reinstall everything, too much work, rather just swap in the NVME drive.

Bree · Feb 5, 2024

Winuser said:
I just checked my MS Account. I have 5 devices listed and 10 devices listed as being linked to the MS store. One devices is a Windows 11 Home VM. When I'm more awake I check what devices I don't need linked to the MS Store and remove them.

As far as I can tell, there is no limit to the number of devices you can link to your MS account, well none that MS have published, anyway. I have 15 so far, and run out of devices to test the limits with :wink:

There is however a maximum of 10 devices that can be linked to the Store at any one time.

Winuser · Feb 5, 2024

Bree said:
There is however a maximum of 10 devices that can be linked to the Store at any one time.

If I'm remembering correctly in the beginning there was no limit then MS decided to cap it at 5. Now I see that it is up to 10 devices. I can see a limit on paid apps if the developer wants a device limit but not on the free apps.

glasskuter · Feb 5, 2024

Bree said:
The second time was to transfer a digital licence for Pro from an old laptop with a failing screen to another one I'd bought as a replacement. I swapped the old machine's HDD into the new one, then swapped over the digital licence using the Activation Troubleshooter,

Got a question for you.
With MS stopping upgrades to 10 (and then on to 11) using 7-8 keys, don't you think this is going to put a quietus to this practice of moving a drive from one system to another and the troubleshooter allowing the second machine to activate simply by saying you changed the hardware? I'm talking about those circumstances when machine#1 had a digital license activated using a 7-8 key and machine #2 has no underlying license for 10-11 in it's UEFI.

antspants · Feb 5, 2024

antspants said:
You didn’t change an email on the PC in question recently? Or a login?

sdowney717 said:
No, I almost never do anything with it as my wife uses it.

sdowney717 said:
Bree, you are right. I just logged out of my ms account and into hers

lol I asked you that? You said you hadn’t done anything.

Bree · Feb 5, 2024

glasskuter said:
Got a question for you.
With MS stopping upgrades to 10 (and then on to 11) using 7-8 keys, don't you think this is going to put a quietus to this practice of moving a drive from one system to another and the troubleshooter allowing the second machine to activate simply by saying you changed the hardware? I'm talking about those circumstances when machine#1 had a digital license activated using a 7-8 key and machine #2 has no underlying license for 10-11 in it's UEFI.

No, I don't think so. A digital licence doesn't seem to have any record of where it came from, whether that was from a W7/8 upgrade or a W10/11 key. Both my old machine and it's replacement that I transferred the Pro digital licence to had digital licences obtained by the W7>W10 free upgrade, while it was still available. I transferred the Pro digital licence to the new hardware long after MS turned off the free upgrade for a W7/8 key.

As I said at the time about the replacement laptop: "the Activation Troubleshooter reported that this PC had a valid digital licence for Home, So it would appear that any digital licence obtained by upgrading from W7 or W8 is still valid today, they haven't been revoked just because the free upgrade has ended. It's just a pity that this PC's digital licence was only for Home."

sdowney717 · Feb 5, 2024

antspants said:
lol I asked you that? You said you hadn’t done anything.

I do so many different things in this life I live, I can never recall them all!
I often think if I remembered all things, I would become a useless idiot overwhelmed with knowledge, not good for anything in particular.

antspants · Feb 5, 2024

sdowney717 said:
I do so many different things in this life I live, I can never recall them all!
I often think if I remembered all things, I would become a useless idiot overwhelmed with knowledge, not good for anything in particular.

You’re obviously no idiot. I do however understand forgetful only too well.

Winuser · Feb 5, 2024

sdowney717 said:
I do so many different things in this life I live, I can never recall them all!

Don't feel alone. It happens to all of us. With AI slowly taking over I look for it to get worse. I feel that the brain is like a a muscle that needs to be exercised and AI is going to make it harder for us to be able to think on our own. That's just my opinion so please don't anyone get upset with me for saying that.

Winuser · Feb 5, 2024

antspants said:
You’re obviously no idiot. I do however understand forgetful only too well.

Two things I hate the most. 1. walking into a room and forgetting why. 2. Saying to myself, I put this here so I'll know where it's at when I need it. Then forgetting where it is.

Edwin · Feb 5, 2024

Winuser said:
Two things I hate the most. 1. walking into a room and forgetting why. 2. Saying to myself, I put this here so I'll know where it's at when I need it. Then forgetting where it is.

Huh???
Oh, sorry..., what'd you say???