Windows works perfectly fine even when unactivated, she just can't customize colours and wallpapers and such without additional tools, until it's activated. tether the PC to her phone and use the phone's mobile-data for a few moments to get Windows to activate, or just wait until they get a connection from the local library you mentioned. It does not need Internet 24/7 to remain activated, it only needs Internet for about 60 seconds to activate itself and then never again she could e.g. Windows would obviously remain unactivated until it can activate itself. Yup, she wouldn't have to do anything extra about it. I'm just trying to make this PC as fool proof as possible for her so I don't have to walk her through things for hours on the phone, make a house call, or haul it back home to fix it. What if she picks the wrong Windows edition during installation because the installer doesn't know what the board is tied with? They borrow out a hot-spot from the local library when it's available maybe once a month or every other month for a few days or a week, but otherwise don't have any internet.

What if she doesn't have internet? She honestly does not always have it available at home. So if she were to need to reinstall Windows on the same motherboard then when it asks for the key she would skip that and then assuming she selected the correct version of Windows (and this is why I'd like to store the key) then it would be activated once she connects to the internet.

I dunno how to write a key there, though, as I've never had any reason to bother. You are actually correct: the key is stored in the BIOS. For the OEM-keys it really is as easy as I just mentioned, though. I've always just bought those OEM-version keys, since they cost like 10€. That's how it already works 1 Windows generated a UUID for the PC, then sends that off to Microsoft's activation-servers and then, if you have to reinstall Windows on that PC, you don't have to re-enter the key as the installer will detect that 'hey, this UUID has already had a successful activation earlier on, let's just re-use it again.' It's really handy.ġ) I'm not sure if this applies to the non-OEM Windows.

Windows digital key