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As of windows 7, the license is quite literally tied to the hardware, as it's in the bios rom. http://www.guytechie.com/articles/2010/2/25/how-slp-and-slic-wor

• Crosseye_Jack 10y ago
  > As of windows 7, the license is quite literally tied to the hardware. Dates back to at least XP with Windows. The string that was checked in XP was very simple and later versions were digital certificates. Windows 10 OEM (started with 8 iirc) use per machine fingerprinting and have individual keys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Locked_Pre-installation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Locked_Pre-installation System builder licences are fairly cheap but the EULA for them state that they are for putting on a new machine and selling that hardware on, if your building a machine for yourself you need a standard licence. As for the cheap licences found on sites such as Kinguin. Speculation is a number of keys on these sites come from stolen CC's. Buy keys from legit sites with stolen Cc, sell the codes on Kinguin/G2A. Legit store is hit with charge back once CC holder realise they had their card has been used. It's been a fairly regular complaint in the indie games industry http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys