If you encounter issues, you can use the built-in Windows 10 activation troubleshooter or contact Microsoft support to activate Windows 10.ĭid you encounter any activation issues after replacing the drive on your PC? Do share your experience by leaving a comment below.

Windows 10 will be automatically activated once you connect the PC to the internet. In short, if you have a properly activated Windows 10 PC, you can replace the internal drive without worrying about activation. I didn’t have to use the Windows 10 activation troubleshooter or contact Microsoft support to activate Windows 10 after replacing HDD with SSD. Luckily, as soon as I connected the PC to the internet, Windows 10 got immediately activated. I forgot to mention that they sent me a replacement M.2 SSD with an image and first I loaded that but after that did not activate and Dell support asked me to re-install it failed and I downloaded Windows 10 from Dell using Dell OS Recovery Tool which asked for the service tag so I assume it is the OEM. The installation process took a little over 20 minutes and was considerably faster than installing on an HDD.Īfter installing HDD, I was curious to know if Windows 10 will be automatically activated as I had not linked Windows 10 license to my Microsoft account on this PC before replacing the HDD with SSD. Turned on the Dell laptop, connected it to the power source (hardly get two hours of backup), and installed Windows 10 on SSD from the bootable USB.

Dell windows 10 activation