Installing Windows from Ubuntu

[Karl Auer]

On Sun, 2023-04-30 at 10:33 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
> Win10 is more usable than just about anything earlier unactivated.
> Install it on bare metal & on almost any UEFI PC it will self
> activate using a key in the firmware.

Even better, you can generally extract the product key from the
firmware and use it to activate a virtual. Provided you don't use the
key in more than one place, I would even say that this is a proper use
of a key you have actually paid for, but IANAL and who knows what
restrictions Microsoft might have applied.

The method I used a couple of years ago and stuck in my Big List Of
Handy Hints was this:

   sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM

I just checked and it still seems to work on my two-year old Lenovo
laptop, so I guess it's Windows 10. I get this:

   kauer at kt1:~$ sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
   [sudo] password for kauer: 
   MSDMU
   LENOVOCB-01   
   ACPI
   XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

The Xes are the key (obfuscated here). You are looking for five
consecutive sets of five characters separated by hyphens. Each set
contains only decimal digits and upper case letters.

Regards, K.

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer