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I just purchased a new laptop, which comes with Windows 8 Home Pro preinstalled. But I'm a Ubuntu user. However, I find it handy to have a virtual machine with Windows in it.

I have yet to receive the laptop and Windows hasn't been activated. I wonder what would be the best steps, if I can activate this copy on Virtualbox somehow. I presume it won't come with W8 disk, so I also need to consider how to actually install Windows on virtualbox if I wipe everything and start fresh with Ubuntu without activating it.

Since I purchased Windows and I'm going to install it on a single machine, albeit Virtual, I believe this would be legal? I'm not sure of the best procedure. I'm sure this was asked before, but I couldn't find a best practice for newly purchased laptops.

unfulvio
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As someone pointed in the comments to my original question, there's no way to let Windows 8/10 accept an OEM license key when you install from a VM.

I tried with different methods, extracting my product ID and license key from the OEM installed Windows 8 (there was no key supplied with a sticker on the bottom of the laptop or on the battery or along the attached docs (Lenovo Thinkpad). I also updated Windows 8 to Windows 10, the key changed but this didn't work either. If you happen to be in this situation you can still try though.

However, I found out that you can download Windows 10 Home/Pro from Microsoft itself. You are prompted for activation but Windows lets you skip that and from what I understood apart from some nagging and the inability to customize the desktop, it seems a fully working copy of Windows, which also updates. Since I really needed this for occasional testing, it wouldn't bother me. Of course I don't know if this will go on forever or not. Ideally I would like to have it activated. Perhaps will contact MS, who knows maybe they will be friendly enough to give me a key...

unfulvio
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