1. i install win7/8 with retail key and stay activated. 2. i run win10 upgrade setup and at this time, the setup will submit my license info to MS server 3. MS server record my machine info 4. win10 upgrade completes and win10 is activated (5), later on ,i can freshly install win10 and still stay activated because MS server has my machine info some questions after looking around, i found many people have been issued with a generic key ending with 366VT after upgrading to win10 1. it looks like this free upgrade will give people a generic key instead of a unique key to everyone( dont know, have to wait till 7/29, i really really hope everyone can get a unique key....) 2. if i change a lot of hardware, i am sure MS server will refuse to activate....normally, what i do is use phone activation to activate.... but if we are given a generic key, do you think the phone activation can still work? if not, i have to repeat step 1 - 4....so laborious...in that case, it's better to get a unique key thanks
Yes, you can clean reinstall. I've tested this multiple times now. They have your machine information. If you change too much hardware, you're out of luck. You could go back and install Windows 8.1 and activate it using a retail key and do the whole process over again, and it would work (i've tested this too) and once again it would submit your hardware to microsoft. Keep in mind this will only work for a year, as after that the whole free upgrade process is over. I installed a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 activated using the same product key on multiple computers (once computer at a time, only after the old installation was gone) to get them all on Windows 10 and it all worked fine. I also reactivated them with clean install and it worked fine too (just to verify the activation was actually still legit).
thank you so much, looks like this free upgrade doesnt give too much "freedom" :O so, old routine, get a unique key somehow, sometime :O
Of course there'll be plenty of unique Retail/VL_MAK keys available in a year from now, you just need to go to "correct" place on the internet so no worry.