Dual Boot Invalidates Legitimate Win10 - How to turn off OpenCore spoofing for Win10

[PhantomSlapESQ]

Any help on this would be much appreciated. I'm running OpenCore 0.6.1 with Catalina 10.15.6. On another drive I have Windows 10 fully updated. My main issue is that my legit copy of Windows 10 was invalidated because I think when I put on my new product key, it saw the serial and stats for my base hardware. I should not have put in my product key during Windows installation (is my guess). Dual Boot works fine now, and I can even use Boot Camp to change the startup disks (though none of the Apple Trackpad and Apple keyboard drivers appear to work unfortunately. That's a separate issue though).

I tried various guides to try to get dual boot on a single drive and it just didn't take until I did the following with two separate SSD drives.

1. I have already created on a fully functional OpenCore EFI for Catalina on a dedicated drive on my Hack.
2. I disconnected the dedicated macOS drive above.
3. I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 with a new legitimate product key.
4. I put back the the dedicated macOS drive with OpenCore EFI.
5. OC's boot menu could see Windows on the other drive as well as Catalina.
6. I booted into Catalina and then I reset.
7. I went into Windows.
8. Windows was acting like there was some kind of security issue (asking me to revalidate passwords and stuff).
9. Still didn't complain about invalidation.
10. I installed the Boot Camp stuff.
11. Reset again into Windows.
12. Windows says the product key is being used by another machine.
13. I later found out it was using the macOS serial Hack and the acidthera (OpenCore) brand for the mobo in Windows and that's what Microsoft sees.
14. Is there a way so that I can just have Windows see the base Asus serial numbers and stuff?
15. I'm guessing it has something to do with OC loading the Serial, etc. into NVRAM or the Bootstrap.efi being turned on, but Im not sure where to start and have found nothing on the Internet.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Any help on this would be much appreciated. I'm running OpenCore 0.6.1 with Catalina 10.15.6. On another drive I have Windows 10 fully updated. My main issue is that my legit copy of Windows 10 was invalidated because I think when I put on my new product key, it saw the serial and stats for my base hardware. I should not have put in my product key during Windows installation (is my guess). Dual Boot works fine now, and I can even use Boot Camp to change the startup disks (though none of the Apple Trackpad and Apple keyboard drivers appear to work unfortunately. That's a separate issue though).

I tried various guides to try to get dual boot on a single drive and it just didn't take until I did the following with two separate SSD drives.

1. I have already created on a fully functional OpenCore EFI for Catalina on a dedicated drive on my Hack.
2. I disconnected the dedicated macOS drive above.
3. I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 with a new legitimate product key.
4. I put back the the dedicated macOS drive with OpenCore EFI.
5. OC's boot menu could see Windows on the other drive as well as Catalina.
6. I booted into Catalina and then I reset.
7. I went into Windows.
8. Windows was acting like there was some kind of security issue (asking me to revalidate passwords and stuff).
9. Still didn't complain about invalidation.
10. I installed the Boot Camp stuff.
11. Reset again into Windows.
12. Windows says the product key is being used by another machine.
13. I later found out it was using the macOS serial Hack and the acidthera (OpenCore) brand for the mobo in Windows and that's what Microsoft sees.
14. Is there a way so that I can just have Windows see the base Asus serial numbers and stuff?
15. I'm guessing it has something to do with OC loading the Serial, etc. into NVRAM or the Bootstrap.efi being turned on, but Im not sure where to start and have found nothing on the Internet.

View attachment 491488

Hi there.

Interesting problem. One likely caused by the UUIDs being spoofed. Not many of us will know how MS validates an activation but we do know that a significant hardware change causes it to baulk.

I doubt you can get Windows to somehow "tunnel" through to the base hardware, overriding the OpenCore keys and spoofs. With Clover (off-topic I know) you would be able to select a different config.plist to boot, set up with the SmUUIDs MS is happy with. But hey, who wants to do the work?

My guess is you have to either install Windows when your Mac OC setup is complete, or move to a separate drive. Personally I always go for a separate drive.

Anyway, sorry that's no direct help. But it's an interesting problem, and I feel for you loosing activations. No one likes the MS phone activation process.

 

[PhantomSlapESQ]

I doubt you can get Windows to somehow "tunnel" through to the base hardware, overriding the OpenCore keys and spoofs.

What's funny is that if I disconnect the OpenCore/macOS entirely, Windows still reports the serial number. It should be running like a normal Windows machine at that point just like I installed it. I haven't modified the Windows EFI. Something is stuck in the NVRAM or the BIOS. I've tried clearing the NVRAM to no avail. You would think that it would be easier for OC to just see the hardware as it is as it takes some fancy coding to override the BIOS, etc, but idk.

I doubt you can get Windows to somehow "tunnel" through to the base hardware, overriding the OpenCore keys and spoofs. With Clover (off-topic I know) you would be able to select a different config.plist to boot, set up with the SmUUIDs MS is happy with. But hey, who wants to do the work?

As you know, I'm pretty new to all of this. I know there are ways of making conditional statements and I think the base OC EFI has a lot stuff like that build in. At the very least, I could physically swap the config.plist (or even a Clover EFI) if I really wanted to though that is not convenient at all. The OC config.plist could be set to not spoof a vendor. I don't know if that would help.

My guess is you have to either install Windows when your Mac OC setup is complete, or move to a separate drive. Personally I always go for a separate drive.

I definitely should have put the product key in AFTER the window install was complete AND booting from the OpenCore EFI. This may not be a problem for people installing both on one phyiscal drive (which I haven't been able to do) since OC just takes over that whole drive.

Anyway, sorry that's no direct help. But it's an interesting problem, and I feel for you loosing activations. No one likes the MS phone activation process.

Thanks for trying! I got my Windows key from an OEM bulk seller which is supposed to be legit according to this Tom's Hardware web site. But the disadvantage is I might not be able to use Microsoft's support. We shall see. These are OEM keys I believe. I will try to go back to the vendor and see if I can "Return it" or get another one.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Thanks for trying! I got my Windows key from an OEM bulk seller which is supposed to be legit according to this Tom's Hardware web site. But the disadvantage is I might not be able to use Microsoft's support. We shall see. These are OEM keys I believe. I will try to go back to the vendor and see if I can "Return it" or get another one.

Worth a try

The thing with OEM Windows keys is they can only be used once, but you should be allowed to re-install or add hardware, and that's what the phone activation should do. The cliff-hanger thing to wait for is will they give you the dreaded "We cannot activate this copy ... Goodbye" and then hang up. When that happens you need a new key. No point talking to anyone.

 

[1Revenger1]

You can use Kernel->CustomSMBIOSGUID = true, and PlatformInfo->UpdateSMBIOSMode = "Custom" to use a different EFI variable which will only affect macOS