Important Info For Those Who Have Upgraded Their Os

[hc4361]

If you have upgraded your pc to W10 then the product key you have for your W7 or W8.1 Operating System will not be valid.

It is very important that you know the product key for W10 in case you have to do a fresh install in the future, perhaps because your hard drive has failed completely.

I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't tell us the new key when we upgrade but it is easy to find the key using this download at:

www.snipca.com/17516

This also applies to those who have upgraded from W8 to W8.1

[VHG]

>>>>I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't tell us the new key when we upgrade

My understanding is that when you upgrade from W7 or W8 to Windows 10 details of your hardware AND your W10 key are stored on the Microsoft servers.

When you come to do a clean install of W10 at a later date Microsoft check your hardware against their servers and if it has a valid W10 key then you don't need to enter a W10 key yourself.

This is why you MUST do an upgrade to W10 before doing a clean install of W10.

If you do the clean install of W10 first then you wont have a W10 key to enter and W10 will never activate.

[hc4361]

I upgraded my W8 machine to W8.1. I bought the Windows 8 disk from a legitimate retailer and it installed and ran without problem. It was activated.

I upgraded to W8.1 and it ran well, was activated as it should have been. My hard disk failed completely so I replaced it. I reinstalled W8 using the original disk and licence key then updated to W8.1. I upgraded to W10 and when I tried to use my W8 key I got the 'key not recognised' or 'key invalid' message and I could not continue the upgrade.

I got in contact with MS and they said the key was invalid because the key I was using was for W8, not W8.1. I explained the whole scenario, twice, to two different people. To cut a long story short it was a long winded, expensive process as I had no choice but to buy another operating system after wasting hours over several days with MS.

[Old_Geezer]

"My understanding is that when you upgrade from W7 or W8 to Windows 10 details of your hardware AND your W10 key are stored on the Microsoft servers."

Really... what a bunch of control freaks, nosing at one's personal items >:-( Shouldn't be allowed.

[hc4361]

And of course if you upgrade your hardware you're stuffed.

[VHG]

>>>Really... what a bunch of control freaks, nosing at one's personal items >:-

Windows has always done this (not just in W10), it checks which hardware you are running on when you first install Windows.

Then if you do a reinstall of Windows it checks the hardware is the same, and if not it wont activate.

So if you have changed your hardware (new motherboard for example) you can normally phone them up and tell them this and they will activate it over the phone.

[Old_Geezer]

I don't doubt it.
They clearly have few morals/scruples.

[ukbod2015]

You can severely limit what your machine sends to Microsoft during the installation of Win 10 and probably others - you have to do a custom install - otherwise you have to pick your way through 13 pages turning it all off. The only things I left on was error reporting and location to allow my searches to be more relevant.

[Zacs-Master]

Ahhh, the simplicity of having an iMac.