Many times on our Windows computers we have seen a permanent announcement with invisible ink where it says that our license is not activated, which perhaps for many is an invitation for the license they have to be removed or deactivated to replace it with another. If this is your case or there is another reason behind it, here we show you how to remove and deactivate your Windows 10 license.
Before indicating the steps for you to deactivate and remove your Windows license, it is necessary to understand what a license is, how it works, and what is its importance in Windows 10.
What is a license in Windows?
Well, a license is usually a key or text registration that basically allows us to legalize the use of a product, in this case, our Windows computer. We can highlight three types of licenses in Windows.
On the one hand, there are the RTL or Retail, which we can acquire in the official Microsoft store or in physical stores; The main characteristic of this type of license is that it can only be used on one computer and not on several at the same time.
On the other hand, we have the OEM license, which we have by default on our computer when we have bought it. In this case, it is assumed that we have covered the cost of the license at the time of purchase.
Finally, there are the KMS (Key Management Service). This type of license allows us to implement a KMS server with Windows Server, which will be in charge of activating the machines that connect to it. This server is where we basically have to enter our volume license.
Importance of a license in Windows 10
Having a license in Windows 10, officially and actively, allows us to fully enjoy the operating system. In other words, it allows us to explore and apply all its functions that it offers us; We can identify two aspects in which it is necessary to have our activated license :
- We can customize our operating system. We are given the possibility to change the lock screen background, the theme, among other things.
- We have official updates for Windows. It is relevant to have the latest system updates in case we experience problems with our current version, an update can correct it! Similarly, a current version allows us to enjoy new functions, of course, if that is the case.
We must clarify that if we do not have an activated license, nothing happens, therefore we will not be limited in what we do on our computer. It can be said that having an activated license opens the doors to fully experience the operating system, but if you do not want it, there is no problem.
When is it necessary to activate or deactivate the Windows 10 license?
We talked about what a Windows 10 license is and its importance, but at what point is it necessary to get rid of the Windows license?
In general, the need to get rid of that license that we have is given for the following reasons:
- When we have activation errors in the system, at the beginning we talk about this matter. Having it there permanently can be annoying and if for some reason we have a new license that we want to activate, we need to get rid of the one that we have more recently.
- When we want to transfer the license key to other devices. If we have bought a new device with Windows and we want to transfer the license of our first device to the latter, we must deactivate our current license.
With what we have mentioned so far, let’s go through the steps to deactivate and remove our Windows license.
Deactivating and removing the Windows license through the cmd
In order to deactivate and remove the license that we have on our computer, we simply have to do the following:
- Access the command prompt or cmd by pressing the ” Windows + R ” key and then write ” cmd “.
- We wrote the following in the pop -up a window of the cmd: slmgr/UPK .
- We will see a small pop-up window where it will say that the product key was uninstalled correctly, there we press ” accept “.
Check uninstall and disable Windows license
In order to confirm that we have managed to get rid of our license of Windows properly, we must do the following:
- Heading to the configuration of the Windows system.
- Go to the section where it says: “ Update and security ”.
- Click on ” activation “. There we will notice that some letters appear in red, where it basically indicates that it is not possible to activate Windows on this device because it does not have a digital license and so on. With this, it would be enough to realize that we did it the right way.
Then, having followed the steps described here we will have managed to deactivate and eliminate our Windows license, opening the possibility to obtain a new official Windows license, with which we can enjoy all the updates and options to be able to customize our computer to our taste.