As many here will know, i've been pushing back from moving on from Windows 7 for several years now for reasons i won't go over again... that said i decided a couple of days ago that i can't put it back any longer so backed up everything and took the plunge... it was all going well until it came time to activate Windows, both the OEM keys i had for Win10 were rejected.

I should have known better, but it never crossed my mind at the time when i used them a couple of years ago to learn what all the fuss was about when i set up a Win7 dual-boot that i was killing the licences, oh well

Fast forward to a couple of days ago with a new motherboard, memory, processor etc installed... even though Win10 was usable i couldn't activate it because the product keys were tied up by my now old motherboard/BIOS.
Kicking myself, i went online to see if i could find somewhere that was selling surplus OEM product keys, i got lucky and found a company selling surplus Win10 Pro OEM product keys for only, sit down for this... £3.
I know that sounds too good to be true and it might well be too good to be true, but it activated and saved me a hell of a lot of time effort and money... i'd also add that even if MS cancel the key then i can live with only losing £3, which at today's exchange rate is less than $4.

Fwiw, I know this is a bit of a grey area but this is for a PC i built myself and it's highly unlikely i'll ever sell it on.

In my time honoured fashion, despite my best efforts i still managed to bugger up my first attempt at installing and setting up Windows... but i knew there was a good chance i was going to do that so i didn't mess around too much with partitions etc... i've spent all day today (on and off) on my second attempt and so far so good

I would wonder about a key that cheap but then Windows 10 does reach end of life in about a year and a half...

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Truth be told i'm still wondering about it, but at that price what did i have to lose?

Since you bought in good faith I wouldn't be overly concerned. Since it activated it should stay that way. If you look under system/activation it should read as "Windows is activated with a digital license..." or similar. Path and wording may be a bit different as I'm looking in Windows 11.

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That's exactly what it says along with, "Edition: Windows 10 Pro" so it all looks good.

As ever with buying something like this on the internet i'm watching my bank account like a hawk just in case it was a phishing exercise to get my bank details but given i paid with Paypal i should be ok in that it's highly unlikely Paypal would share that info with the seller.

To continue the good news front i've just spent 3 hours with Open-Shell and Winaero Tweaker getting things back to how i like them (read that as turning off a lot of the bells and whistles off & bringing back some of the Windows software i'm used too, such as Picture Viewer, Calculator, the old Task Manager etc).
One things that's very weird though is every time i reboot my Desktop icons are scrambled and i haven't been able to work out why... on the plus side i installed Desktop Restore so it's not a big deal, a mouse click and they are back where i want them but it is strange how it happens after every reboot.
cf. http://www.midiox.com/desktoprestore.htm

I'm just left with trying to sort out my taskbar now, i hate pinned icons so will try and resurrect the Quick Launch area if i can... it was a pain to get it back under Win7 so i'm sure i'll be pulling my hair out again for an hour or two with that again LOL

I am a huge fan of Winaero Tweaker.

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Absolutely, it wasn't that i spent 3 hours making changes it was that the list of things that could be tweaked is so vast, that's took up most of the time!

To my surprise and relief regaining Quick Launch on my taskbar was pretty much exactly the same as Win7 so it only took a minute or two

Thought i'd give an update on the weird desktop icon scrambling issue i've been having:

It turns out that when i installed Win10 i'd somehow managed to unleash a demonic desktop Recycle Bin icon.

During many searches trying to work out what was causing my desktop icons to move, and how too resolve it... i thought it could be a graphics driver issue, or possibly even an icon from some of the older (and no longer supported) software i like that could be causing the issue (that didn't make sense either because i had this issue before i installed anything), but no, afaict it turns out it's a Win10 issue that not everyone experiences.

Quite what the root cause is/was i have no idea other than there must surely be some sort of coding error somewhere, i'm just glad i was able to find a solution for this because it was really beginning to move on from being an annoyance to becoming a personal battle of wills between myself and Win10!

Out of the many threads i read there were one or two where it was mentioned that disabling the Recycle Bin in 'Desktop Icon Settings' might help, but the answer that came back in those threads was that it didn't so i dismissed them, partly because there was no explanation into how the recycle bin could be causing the issue, but also because it just made no sense to me that a system icon could cause this issue straight out of the box.

With every other option seemingly exhausted i decided to give disabling the recycle bin a try, what followed was... i honestly thought my PC was possesed by a demonic Recycle Bin!

I went to Desktop Icon Settings and unchecked Recycle Bin, rebooted, and would you believe it my icons stayed exactly where i placed them previously, with an empty space where the recycle bin had been previously...
Just to make sure i wasn't seeing things i rebooted again, same result!

Now this is where things got weird... i re-enabled the recycle bin and it appeared in the bottom left of my desktop.
Rebooted again, and it somehow managed to move to the bottom right of my desktop! WTF!!
But at least all my other icons were where they were supposed to be.

Moved the recycle bin to the centre of my desktop and rebooted again... all my icons AND the recycle bin didn't move!

Moved the recycle bin back to the top left of my desktop where Windows initially placed it, rebooted, and as if by magic my desktop icons are now stable!

Over the years i've seen some very strange things happen in Windows but this one could be the strangest i've ever seen, yet!

Interesting and strange.Personally I don't have the recycle bin on my main system's desktop, I keep in the Start Menu and taskbar. I just create a new shortcut with the following location and pin to Start and taskbar.
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder
This actually opens the recycle bin folder with all bin options at the top. If the issue comes back you nay want to create a shortcut with the above location.

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I really don't like pinned programmes on my taskbar because it just clutters the shortcuts with open programmes imo which is why i always enable the Quick Launch area as one of the first things i do when installing a Windows operating system.

That said, it never occurred to me before to add the Recycle Bin into Quick Launch before so i'll keep that at the back of my mind as an option if the issue occurs again

As an aside, i'm likely going to reformat and start from scratch again now that i've worked through most of the issues i've come across.
I'm still not happy with the taskbar and desktop graphic effects and colours but as they are just cosmetic that shouldn't be a major issue going forward.

Apart from the desktop icons and learning where everything is now, getting KB5034441 installed proved another headache, one that was only resolved by resizing the MS recovery partition on the root of my install drive (MS really dropped the ball on that one!), i should be good to go.

Quick Launch is the part of the taskbar where I have my recycle bin. I also have it on both pages of my start menu. I have apps and utilities on different pages of the start menu which are switched with the mouse scroll wheel. Regardless, the location I posted for making a shortcut works just fine if left on the desktop. The only downside of using a shortcut as the recycle bin is that you won't the icon change between empty and filled. You also don't have the right click options but I rather like the full folder window more as I can selectively empty if there is an item I'm not quite sure about so I don't consider it a downside. What you get is exactly the same as if you right click on the icon and select to open. I do this stuff as I like a totally clean desktop with zero icons as I use animated desktops. I even have the taskbar set to hide.

Part of my taskbar. There are some third party mods.


Here is part of my start menu. It will look quite different from yours as I use a third party start menu called Start11 by Stardock. Pretty handy for $9.99 USD.
https://www.stardock.com/products/start11
Start11 also will modify the taskbar even to the point of making it a floating app dock. I do a bit of modification to the taskbar such as transparency and texture. Actually I set my taskbar to transparent with blur. The result is that the taskbar always reflects the color of the desktop behind and the blur makes it obviously the taskbar. LOL! I guess I need to move the weather app in Start...

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Yes, that is very different to what i have and prefer... i'm a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to desktops i guess lol

What you see below is what i've managed to get so far with Open-Shell, free and open source.
It doesn't show up very well in the pic but the quick launch area is between the idents under the start menu.

A clearer view of my Quick Launch area which i'm sure you're familiar with, as you can see there's a clear definition (or will be if/when i find a better colour for the taskbar) between the shortcuts and open windows that you don't get with 'pinned' apps and/or open windows:

We just look at the desktop differently. I mean I run dual 4K monitors of 43 and 55 inches as part of my entertainment wall so I pretty much always have a computer display going and sometimes both as both screens can be sourced to either cable or computer. Actually the 43 inch is wired to do cable, main system and my micro system. Since I always have a computer display going I want them pretty as to the desktop. Actually I do animated desktops with another Stardock offering, Dreamscapes. I can use any .WMV video file as my wallpaper. Here are some samples...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgbcg1vlNDU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w53oyhd7Y6o

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That's very true, i'm running mine as a desktop PC and not a media centre