Greetings, I've been wondering this for awhile and wanted input. A few years ago I bought Win7 Home Edition complete with it's own key. Then I bought more memory (more then the Home edition would allow actually) so I had to update windows to a new version of Win7 to make use of the memory. Now during this process Microsoft sent me a new Windows key for Win7 Ultimate edition. Ok so @ this point do I have the orginal key for Win7 Home & now a key for Ultimate? Thus having 2 copies of Win7 - Home/Ultimate? Also to further muddy the waters I upgraded to Win10 awhile back which if I remember correctly stated that the Windows key I was using was now a Windows 10 key. So do I have 3 copies of windows to play with? Can I install Win7 Home on another pc using the orginal key? Then build another pc using the Win7 Ultimate key? Yeah I'm pretty confused by this point.
Yep, your Windows 7 keys are separate keys, Home Premium and Ultimate Windows 10s key is your machines hardware ID, you no longer need a key for it if you have already upgraded to 10 and activated The Windows 7 keys should still work for Windows 7 Originally it was thought that the 10 upgrade consumed the previous OS license, but turned out to be fudd spread by a mod from the Microsoft forums, and the licenses are still valid for the OS they were designed for Confirmed by myself with my 8.1 key too So in a nutshell, you do indeed have 3 OSs to play with, although the Ultimate one might be an upgrade key (But can still be used for clean installs - google "MediaBootInstall upgrade key clean install trick")
dang. alot of info there...thanks =-) Ok so now my main machine that has windows 10 has it's own key so I have my orginal 7Home & 7Ultimate upgrade key. Dang. lol
To top it off I was able to get a fresh install of WinXP complete with updates. Dang ok so I'm covered in Windows. Thx for the info. Owe ya a favor.
It's just that a Retail version of 7, 8 or 8.1 turns into OEM when Upgrading to Windows 10. Hence the "free" upgrade.
I just used my 8.1 key to upgrade a broke friend to 10.They were on XP and it was just getting too onerous to try to install anything being unsupported.
The Win 10 license becomes OEM, as in it is tied to the hardware, but the previous OS license remains whatever it was before the upgrade, and still works for that previous OS The rumour about the previous OS license being converted / consumed by 10 was crap spread by a MS mod on the MS forums I used the 8.1 key I am still using for 8.1 today, to upgrade to 10 originally, kept 10 for a few months before clean installing 8.1 with the same key and it activated fine
Just that retarded MS Answers forum, the place where they don't read the problem, and just copy/paste generic answers Dunno why anyone uses them tbh
Probably best lol http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...0/a09dd25f-c180-4d4b-b02c-1ec7e1a328f5?auth=1
yah honestly i stop going to MS offical places for support when they tried to tell me I need to pay them 25$ to get support to find out why AUTOPLAY on CD's wasnt work on XP? or was it windows 98 long long time ago. I laughed at the guy and hung up on them back then, I never went threw there official support channels after that. And use the term Official support places loosly.
They're just script monkeys, they don't know the answer, they pick out key words and post preset instructions, most of the time, irrelevant to the problem Then when asked why it's not working, the exact same answer is posted again They're like bots, probably are
bot or people that dont anything about computer and or support that is reading a script database, is same thing to me, and why going threw offical support is very last thing i will do. well on topic guess my original idea of having retail key converted to win 10 and then that same key migrated to new system when i do upgrade is out of question. should be fun if say mobo bites dust and only that is replaced trying to get them to allow it.