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How can a Lenovo laptop have Dell's activation info baked into BIOS? If the disk had no activation info, setup would have prompted for a key (trial keys for 30

• oldcynic 9y ago
  It doesn't, it has Lenovo's SLIC in the BIOS. More than enough to activate Windows. Device manager would no doubt show it's a mess of not installed drivers though. Big OEMs including Dell and Lenovo use an activation baked into the BIOS and a SLIC (system licence internal code) that's also in the BIOS. No activation required after restore from legitimate or otherwise CD or restore partition. It won't match the code on the machine's sticker, even if it's 100% legit just bought new from maker. Search will turn up plenty on how SLIC works.
  • zeusk 9y ago
    Lenovo's SLIC wouldn't load an invalid key that required them to then copy the key manually from COA on the laptop itself.
• dfox 9y ago
  IIRC when the BIOS contains the activation data blob the discs are not manufacturer specific. There also used to be discs (at least in the windows 2000 times) that only checked for correct manufacturer name in DMI (or something similar), which obviously were manufacturer specific (AFAIK for a long time this is not possible).
• devindotcom 9y ago
  The Dell-specific stuff would be on the disc. On page 32 you can see the gov operator has to input the Lenovo's COA key to activate the OS: https://imgur.com/a/Ua7SLWo https://imgur.com/a/Ua7SLWo
  • zeusk 9y ago
    The gov operator would also have to input a key during setup and OOBE if the disk did not have a tampered key/activation mechanism.