well, for me it was activated upgrading from legit win 8.1 pro wmc but it had the widespread insider preview key
the upgrade happened from a retail license but it doesn't end up in a license with transfer right? I own a windows 8.1 pro wmc license, that's where the upgrade started from.
That's why I mentioned about changing my hard drive. What they are saying you need to do is to reinstall windows 8/7 with your geniune key then do the upgrade again. It's absurd and stupid! I just hope they come up with some upgrade your product key facility because its so backwards its unbelievable.
then if you change your motherboard, install win8.1 pro wmc, and do the upgrade again to 10, before the year is up. the free upgrade offer is for the life of the device it is on, if you change the motherboard it is no longer the same device. You COULD try calling MS, but would be so much easier to just do it all over before the year is up (if you plan on a new mobo before then).
and there's no cheap $30 offer like the windows 8 key upgrade? having no key is rather worthless. how do they make money now, I don't get it! most likely I'd even paid $50 for a retail key upgrade, but this hardware binding is like the fairytale "The Emperor's New Clothes" ... maybe it's time now to sell my windows 8.1 pro wmc retail license and go back to windows 7 let's get serious: windows 10 is in anyway the biggest sandbox experiment they've ever done. I wish them good luck but now I can even stay with the insider build that has the same license as it seems, it makes no sense to "upgrade" ... or maybe i just don't see the benefits from this ridiculous upgrade process. there must be something wrong from what they told about the upgrade process, cause they stated: OEM gets upgraded to OEM (bound to hardware) RETAIL gets upgraded to RETAIL (transferable) but this thing is not even half a retail license as it has no transfer rights. in the end there's nothing like a static value of a retail license. that's my point of view and as it seems that's the new facts now. so, is it real they give you nothing than a generic, non-transferable key bound to a specific device for free while upgrading from a retail license or is it an error, a failed upgrade, a mistake??? what happened to their promoted upgrade path? also they said telemetry will be removed on the final version wasn't it easier to say it's an optimized version of watson instead of promoting first of all windows 10 has a built in keylogger? do they even remember whats defined or is it all a little bit unsteady as required?
i upgraded from a disc,the upgrade downloaded and it tried to install by itself too early and i had an install error in winupdate,so i upgraded with a disc i had,my computer is activated,so are they saying this will be not accepted as a free upgrade in the future?
Yes that right. I did clean install on Solid State Drive 250GB (already activated) and again clean install on Hard Drive 2TB (already activated) and again clean install on HyperDrive5 64GB (already activated)
Yep, I also switched HDDs... and it's still activated. I think the activation goes by your motherboard just like the 7/8/8.1 OEM keys. But I guess the only difference is that most people will have the same serial for their Win10 installation. ***** = Win7/8/8.1 KMS/MAK -> VOLUME_MAK channel 3V66T = Win7/8/8.1 Retail/OEM -> RETAIL channel
I have done this whole thing, loaded a Pro 7 onto an empty Dell. Has SLIC, so no drama with activation for 7 Then upgraded to 10 Pro, it activated no problem. Clean install after, it would not activate. So did the whole thing over again, 7 -> 10, activated fine. This time I took note of the serial number, and it actually got changed by activation. Originally it was the one with 3V66T at the end. But after activation it was ending in HCFC6, as in completely different serial. Then tried the clean install AGAIN, and this time it would activate and the serial was once more automatically changed to ending in HCFC6 Since it is a box I do not use normally, I thought I would push it once more, and told it to refresh itself in recovery option and after it wanted to be activated again. It wouldn't, so tried to manually change key to the one it itself had changed it to 30 min early and it WAS activated with. But key was refused. So seems to be hit and miss with this, but not surprised, Microsoft hasn't done a decent thing since Windows 2000 and Office 2003, well apart from adding EAS to Outlook 2013. The serial it was changed to, I Goggled after and found a hit where someone else had posted it in a different forum, but can not be found any more, so thought I would only post part of it. Ah, Bing can actually find it, mentioned in two places.