Autopilot Manual Registration Overview

Ideally, registration of a device with Windows Autopilot is performed by the OEM, reseller, or distributor from which the device was purchased. However it is also possible to register devices manually. You might need to register a device manually if:

  • The device was obtained from a non-participant device manufacturer or reseller.
  • The device is a virtual machine (VM).
  • The device does not otherwise qualify for automatic registration, such as an existing legacy device.

The following diagram shows how you might use manual registration and OEM registration to deploy both new and existing devices with Windows Autopilot.

Windows Autopilot device registration process.

For a list of participant device manufacturers and device resellers, see Autopilot device manufacturers and resellers.

To manually register a device, you must first capture its hardware hash. Once this process has completed, the resulting hardware hash can be uploaded to the Windows Autopilot service. Because this process requires booting the device into Windows to obtain the hardware hash, manual registration is intended primarily for testing and evaluation scenarios.

 Note

Customers can only register devices with a hardware hash. Other methods (PKID, tuple) are available through OEMs or CSP partners as described in the previous sections.

Platforms for device registration

After the hardware hashes have been captured from existing devices, they can be uploaded in any of the following ways:

 Important

Microsoft Store for Business and Microsoft Store for Education will be retired in the first quarter of 2023. You can continue to use the current capabilities of free apps until that time. For more information about this change, see Evolving the Microsoft Store for Business and Education.

A summary of each platform’s capabilities is provided below.

Platform/PortalRegister devices?Create/Assign profileAcceptable Device ID
OEM Direct APIYES – 1000 at a time maxNOTuple or PKID
Partner CenterYES – 1000 at a time maxYES34Tuple or PKID or 4K HH
IntuneYES – 500 at a time maxYES124K HH
Microsoft Store for BusinessYES – 1000 at a time maxYES44K HH
Microsoft 365 Business PremiumYES – 1000 at a time maxYES34K HH

1Microsoft recommended platform to use
2Intune license required
3Feature capabilities are limited
4Device profile assignment will be retired from MSfB and Partner Center in the coming months

Ref: Manual registration of devices for Windows Autopilot | Microsoft Learn