What is the best way to get Windows 11 Pro Key for cheap ? : bootcamp

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Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/12

Needed this for some Windows 11 Virtual Machine experiments of Windows 11 on Apple Silicon ARM under VMware Fusion to see how well the Intel x64 emulation on ARM provided by Apple Rosetta or/and Microsoft Windows actually works: [Wayback/Archive] What is the best way to get Windows 11 Pro Key for cheap ? : bootcamp

At the time of writing (especially the “/Archive]” versions of the links below under “Queries” show remarkably cheap licenses):

USD ~25: [Wayback/Archive] Windows 11 Pro Key Retail Edition Purchase at Low Price – Software Key
USD ~20: [Wayback/Archive] Microsoft Windows 11 Pro Deal — Lifetime License
USD ~19: [Wayback/Archive] Buy MS Win 11 Pro OEM KEY GLOBAL (SALE) at scdkey.com
EUR ~5 [Wayback/Archive] InstantCDKey: Windows 11 Professional OEM key
EUR ~5 [Wayback/Archive] Buy Windows 11 Pro Retail Key- Cheapest Price – Electronic First
EUR ~4: [Wayback/Archive] Buy Windows 11 Professional OEM Key – PremiumCDKeys.com
USD ~4: [Wayback/Archive] Windows 11 Pro Product Key | Buy Cheap License – RoyalCDKeys
EUR ~3.5 + 0.75 payment gateway fees [Wayback/Archive] Windows 11 Pro Retail Key – Pcgameskey

Wondering what these will do during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

In the meantime: reset timer galore (:

TL;DR from most links below on activating Windows 11 on ARM under VMware Fusion: it should work, but back in the experimental days (around 2021-2022) it sometimes failed.

[Wayback/Archive] No entitlements needed for these popular VMware downloads on Broadcom Support Portal (BSP)
Wayback Machine https://download3.vmware.com/software/* only has 13.0.0, 13.0.1, 13.0.2, 13.5.0 and 13.5.1. These versions still contain quite a few bugs.
[Wayback/Archive] Anyone looking for VMware Fusion Player for Mac? Found it : vmware
brew install vmware-fusion

Works if anyone is stuck and can’t find dmg file.

[Wayback/Archive] vmware-fusion — Homebrew Formulae
- [Wayback/Archive] homebrew-cask/Casks/v/vmware-fusion.rb at a5aa3d3fad6a93483412e44a4b2d3543cce6a993 · Homebrew/homebrew-cask · GitHub
- [Wayback/Archive] raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/a5aa3d3fad6a93483412e44a4b2d3543cce6a993/Casks/v/vmware-fusion.rb
[Wayback/Archive] Downloading VMware Fusion and Workstation Free for Personal Use | mikeroySoft.com
[Wayback/Archive] The Unofficial Fusion 13 for Apple Silicon Companion Guide… – VMware Technology Network VMTN with version 23 only downloadable from the Wayback Machine as Fusion 13 for Apple Silicon Companion v23.zip later got moved (and upgraded) to [Wayback/Archive] Broadcom Community – Fusion – VMware Cloud Foundation – The Unofficial Fusion for Apple Silicon Companion Guide with version 30 available from the Wayback Machine as Fusion for Apple Silicon Companion v30.pdf.
Ensure you have at least 12 GB of free disk space available in addition to the disk space required for your VM. This space is needed for the Fusion tool to download and build the Windows installation ISO.

If you are looking to install Windows 11 Home Edition, choose the “Professional” edition in the Fusion tool. The generated ISO will contain both Windows 11 Home and Professional Editions.

…
Download the ESD from Microsoft for the desired edition and language (the double quotes are required):”$FUSION”/vmw_esd2iso getesd −−edition edition −−lang tag¬where
edition is Professional for an ISO containing Home and Professional editions, orEnterprise for an ISO containing Professional and Enterprise editions.
tag is one of the Windows language tags used to select the desired language of theWindows installer
…
Create the ISO file from the ESD and include the VMware network driver (the double quotes are required).”$FUSION”/vmw_esd2iso generateiso −−esd esd-file −−drivers “/Volumes/VMware Tools/vmxnet3″¬where esd-file is the name of the ESD file downloaded in step 5. Enclose the file name in double quotes if the name contains spaces.The argument to the −−drivers option must be enclosed in double quotes because it contains spaces in the file names.
…

If you have Windows 11 ARM ISO media created with w11arm_esd2iso, CrystalFetch, Parallels, or UUPdump, you can use them to install a Fusion VM instead of the ISO downloaded from “Get Windows from Microsoft”.

But… these ISOs do not contain a driver for the VMware virtual network device. Without the VMware driver, the Windows out-of-box experience (OOBE) can’t discover a network and can’t complete.

…
Option 3– Disable Windows 11 network checks Disconnect the virtual NIC from the VM.Open a command prompt with Fn-Shift-F10 the first time the OOBE “Is this the right country or region” screen is displayed.Disable the OOBE checks for a network adapter by entering the following in the command prompt:OOBE\bypassnro ¬The VM will reboot. Continue with the OOBE screens, but create a local Windows account instead of using a Microsoft Account.
…
WSL2, Hyper-V, and other Windows features that use virtualization technologies don’t currently work in a Windows 11 ARM VM. This issue has two causes:

M1 and M2 hardware does not support nested virtualization.

macOS Sequoia and M3 hardware does support nested virtualization, but Fusion does not currently support it.WSL1, which does not require Hyper-V features, will work in a Windows 11 ARM VM.
…
It is written by [Wayback/Archive] Technogeezer50 (Paul Rockwell) · GitHub, who – while writing the guide – also wrote this tremendously useful tool that some know as w11arm_esd2iso: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – Technogeezer50/esd2iso: Command line utility to create Windows 11 ARM ISOs from Microsoft ESD
w11arm_esd2iso is a utility to build Windows 11 ARM installation ISOs from Microsoft ESD files. It was born out of necessity for users of VMware Fusion on Apple Silicon Macs. They needed a way to easily obtain an installation ISO for Windows 11 ARM because Microsoft does not provide it via a public download.

The benefits of w11arm_esd2iso over building ISOs from uupdump.net are:
- The ISO is built from a single file downloaded from Microsoft’s ESD repositories.
- The downloaded ESD used to build the ISO is Microsoft’s latest “retail” installation media.
- The build process uses less working disk space.
- The build is faster from ESD vs. downloading, extracting, and stitching together multiple UUP files.
- It’s easier to select the edition and language you need.
- No Windows system required. ISOs can be reliably built on Linux and macOS.
Since this is a command line utility written in the bash shell, it’s best suited for users that are comfortable with working in UNIX/Linux/macOS shell environments and “getting your hands dirty”.
Paul is also the author of these tools:
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – Technogeezer50/24H2_esd2iso: Script to download Windows 11 ARM 24H2 using VMware Fusion built-in tools
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – Technogeezer50/w11arm_addDrivers: Rebuild Windows 11 ARM ISOs with vmxnet3 driver
The Fusion for Apple Silicon Companion also points to these useful steps: [Wayback/Archive] Moving Windows Recovery Partition Correctly – theDXT which includes all the steps, including temporarily disabling the Windows Recovery Partition:

The reagentc /disable command will disable the recovery partition and will move the recovery partition into a file named Winre.wim and will be located in C:\Windows\System32\Recovery.

Back to w11arm_esd2iso, there are more tools like it, some splitting the work over smaller tools so it is easier to follow what happens under the hood:
The ESD downloading tools all use [Wayback] go.microsoft.com/fwlink?linkid=2156292 to download the redirect (at the time of writing [Wayback] download.microsoft.com/download/6/2/b/62b47bc5-1b28-4bfa-9422-e7a098d326d4/products-Win11-20241004.cab which by most ESD tools is often downloaded as products.cab) which contains products.xml with the ESD information database.

For handling, search for xml in [Wayback/Archive] esd2iso/w11arm_esd2iso at main · Technogeezer50/esd2iso · GitHub. Note that the Wayback Machine has overwritten some of the //file URIs with //web.archive.org/web/20250108113634/https://file – for a RAW file, check-out [Wayback/Archive] github.com/Technogeezer50/esd2iso/raw/refs/heads/main/w11arm_esd2iso

Note that WIM and ESD are different Windows Imaging Format representations, see for instance [Wayback/Archive] How to Convert Install.ESD to Install.WIM on Windows – TheITBros (via [Wayback/Archive] What’s the Difference between ESD and WIM and which is better? : windows).
[Wayback/Archive] licensing – Reset Windows Activation/Remove license key – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] dubmojo and [Wayback/Archive] Justin Pearce):
1. Open a command prompt as an Administrator.
2. Enter slmgr /upk and wait for this to complete. This will uninstall the current product key from Windows and put it into an unlicensed state.
3. Enter slmgr /cpky and wait for this to complete. This will remove the product key from the registry if it’s still there.
4. Enter slmgr /rearm and wait for this to complete. This is to reset the Windows activation timers so the new users will be prompted to activate Windows when they put in the key.
This should put the system back to a pre-key state.
[Wayback/Archive] How to rearm Windows trial license – Qxf2 BLOG

Modern.ie was created by Microsoft and allows you to use Windows virtual machines without purchasing Windows licenses. Its awesome! The downside is that the modern.ie virtual machines use evaluation versions of Microsoft Windows and are therefore the license expires. Starting Windows Vista, Microsoft lets you extend your grace period through a process known as ‘rearming’. You typically get up to 3 rearms or 4 times the trial period!! In this post, we will show you how to rearm a Windows 7 virtual machine that we downloaded from modern.ie.
[Wayback/Archive] Reset Windows Activation to pre-key state · GitHub forked as[Wayback/Archive] slmgr.bat: Reset Windows Activation to pre-key state · GitHub (probably better name slmgr.bat into reset-license-to-trial.bat as not to clash with the slmgr.vbs script filename)
[Wayback/Archive] Slmgr.vbs options for obtaining volume activation information | Microsoft Learn

Digital Windows on Intel licenses should work as per these links:

[Wayback/Archive] Windows 11 ARM License Required: | Parallels Forums

I needed to activate my Windows license after installing Windows 11 ARM in Parallels.
My “regular” Windows 11 Pro license, bought directly from Microsoft, worked.

…

I was able to use one of my Windows 7 licenses to activate Windows 11 ARM.

Likely because Microsoft still allows updating from Windows 7 licenses to Windows 10 and 11
[Wayback/Archive] Windows 11 ARM Licensing? : windows

[Wayback/Archive] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-using-windows-11-with-mac-computers-with-apple-m1-and-m2-chips-cd15fd62-9b34-4b78-b0bc-121baa3c568c

Officially supported and i can state that for our end users and even myself, even the x86_64 emulation inside the VM works great for running occasional windows tools I require (SCCM console, etc).

…

What key are you using to activate Windows? It took my Pro key without issues.

No key. Letting it license by cloud/E5. Was autopilot setup, fully AAD joined and Intune enrolled. Seeing if I can get a key from VLSC now.
[Wayback/Archive] Options for using Windows 11 with Mac® computers with Apple® M1®, M2™, and M3™ chips – Microsoft Support
Experiences that depend on an additional layer of virtualization (nested virtualization) aren’t supported, including:
- Windows Subsystem for Android, which enables your Windows 11 device to run Android applications that are available in the Amazon Appstore.
- Windows Subsystem for Linux, which enables a GNU/Linux environment on Windows 11.
- Windows Sandbox, a lightweight desktop environment to safely run applications in isolation.
- Virtualization-based security (VBS), which enables customers to create and isolate a secure region of memory from the normal operating system.
…

Note: You need to have a separate license for Windows 11 Pro if you don’t already have one. A unique license is required for each instance of Windows 11 Pro, either on hardware or in a virtual machine. You can buy a license through the Download option from the Microsoft store or purchase one through retail. Windows 11 Pro product keys are platform agnostic (x64 vs Arm). To use Windows 11 Enterprise with this solution, you first need to get the Windows 11 Pro license. Then upgrade to Windows 11 Enterprise through a volume licensing agreement (contact your IT admin for more information).
[Wayback/Archive] Windows 11 Pro key : bootcamp

Sftkey, Krbkeys, SCDKey, VIP-SCDKey, Kinguin, educational discounts if you qualify, StackSocial, Gamers Outlet

…

a discounted Windows 11 Pro key will totally do the trick!

…

You can even use a windows 10 pro key. It will upgrade it to windows 11 when you enter the code

They also mention this MASSGRAVE team but that’s a route I do not want to take (but am interested in from a technological point of view): [Wayback/Archive] MASSGRAVE · GitHub

People researching Microsoft Windows activation services.
[Wayback/Archive] parallels – Buy a Windows OEM license to gain access to Windows ARM builds in order to play Elite Dangerous – Super User (thanks [Wayback/Archive] tomh, [Wayback/Archive] lx07, [Wayback/Archive] Ramhound):

As for licensing the vm see here : forum.parallels.com/threads/…

…

This was very helpful and I now have it working! Many thanks!

…

I have just successfully activated a Windows 11 ARM VM in Parallels 17 on an M1 Mac using a Windows 10 key that I bought a few months ago.

It should work now and apparently no special keys are needed as of October 2021.

…
[Wayback/ArchiveSave] Windows 11 Pro & Product Key installed and cannot be activated it on – Microsoft Community

My product key was not from the digital process.

All good now and problem resolved in getting my Win 11 Pro product key digital – aka successfully activated my Windows 11 Pro (new Installation) on VMware Fusion Version 13 (Non-Commercial Home use).

(the archivals failed, now the link indicates “Tread not found”)
[Wayback/Archive] VMware Fusion + Windows 11 Licensing question : macgaming

I saw stacksocial has Windows 11 Pro at an affordable price, but it specifically says it’s not to be used with VM.

…

If you want to get get a key, you can buy one online for ~25$ from reputable websites.

…

I got my Windows 11 Pro key from the exact page you linked (it was a bit cheaper when I got it), and works perfectly fine on my Parallels virtual machine, so I’d assume it would work fine on VMWare fusion as well.

EUR ~20: [Wayback/Archive] Microsoft Windows 11 Pro Deal — Lifetime License

Via:

Queries:

--jeroen

This entry was posted on 2026/06/12 at 18:00 and is filed under Power User, Windows, Windows 11. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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