[Invalid] Licencing: Windows 10 Home N VM on Windows 10 Pro Host

[tomybyte]

Windows 10 Home VM: I have a Windows 10 Home licence key, after insertung in Win Home activation field to change the licence key, it says, that the licence key is not working, I should try another one (0xc004f050) Seems to be the error code. I have no other!
Is this depending on virtualization or should I contact the vendor and tell him, that the licence key is not working?

Thanks for reply in advance

Tom

[Martin]

Virtualization has nothing to do with the license key.
The installation disk must be for the same edition as the key, "Windows 10 Home N" is not the same as "Windows 10 Home".
--> ask your vendor.

[tomybyte]

Martin thank you for this information.
Windows 10 Home N is very lightweight, ideal for a VM, I thought Win 10 Home key should work with N version, if not I have to setup the machine a new with win 10 Home (not N).

[mpack]

'N' is not lightweight in any sense that would help a VM. It just has a different starting bundle of apps, the kernel is not different, neither is the shell. I doubt the installer size even is hugely different.

AFAIK this was a legal (competition) decision in the EU zone, not a performance or resources related decision.

p.s. the Windows installer is what enforces licensing policy, not the PC you install it on, virtual or not. So if the next question is "how do I work around Windows refusing this key", then I'm afraid the only answer will be to get a matching installer and product key.

[scottgus1]

FWIW the media I have created from Microsoft's Media Creation Tool has allowed me to pick 'Home' vs 'Home N' vs 'Pro' as well as a few other options. Make a full-featured ISO from the Media Creation Tool for Windows 10 and you should be able to install plain 'Home' to match that key. (you have to be logged in on an Administrator account to use the Tool, btw, right-click-run-as-admin is not enough; got bit a few times on that - after doing the 15-minute download and prep, thank you very much Microsoft )

[tomybyte]

... Microsoft's Media Creation Tool .. pick ... 'Home' ... )

I know this, so I created the Home 10 N version setup DVD. So I have to do it once again without the N. As I know the N means: N - it does not include Media Player and other media related tools.

'N' is not lightweight in any sense that would help a VM. ....

I thought this would be a little smaller than the normal version, but OK I didn't compare the file sizes of the setup versions.
Thank you for the answers.

[socratis]

Marking as [Invalid], this isn't really a VirtualBox problem.