technically it inserts a place-holder key that all upgrades get (some with a different key for whatever reason). the 3V66T key when you check slmgr /dlv is on win7 pro upgrades to 10 pro and win8.1 pro upgrades to 10 pro. Not sure if home is different key. Anyway, the place-holder key is used to say "hey I got the free upgrade" to MS. That is why you can skip it, nobody afaik are going to get a personal free "upgrade key" to call MS if their MOBO explodeedohs the day after the 1 year is up.
I'm sure upgrade will auto detect it, I upgraded 2 images with the OEM thread off Faikee's one was Win 8.1 Pro, it auto detected it was Retail copy and gave me upgraded Win 10 Pro, plus I signed out of Insider thing, just playing, upgraded 10240 non insider anymore, Gave me Win 10 Pro, activated, I would think it would have given me Home version if that was what I needed, no back sliding now, please, lol
He's right. Nothing will change on the 29th. Anyone to say otherwise doesn't know what they're really talking about and hasn't analysed how the activation system actually works. It's all just FUD. Please don't keep posting the "what if" or "this is going to happen" type comments without an actual source that shows that it will definitely happen on or after the 29th. You're creating fear, uncertainty and doubt for some people here and that's only going to make our (the MDL moderators) jobs harder. Just wait until the 29th to see if you were wrong?
Sounds like you found something??? The only thing I can state with some measure of confidence @ this stage: Upgrade via ISO can be done offline. The Activation state of the qualifying OS is stored locally during upgrade. On activation then the HW# appears to be stored on the MS Activation Server against an otherwise blocked key.
You don't. Windows 10 doesn't accept Windows 7 keys of any kind, so you can't type in a COA key at any point before or after the installation. The Windows 10 installer collects hardware info and that gets sent to Microsoft if you pass a genuine test. When booted into Windows 10 it will then check that you're found on their activation servers. Your hardware becomes your unique activation key and the 3V66T key is nothing but a placeholder. It has no importance. Keep in mind that I'm the guy that brought Windows Loader to people, told others that the next Windows OS would be "cracked" via KMS before the OS even had a name and contributed to Windows 8 key decoding.
if you updated from a previous illegible OS 7-8-8.1, it will ask for key on clean install , don't enter any (for me it asked 3 times. 1 at the beginning, and twice at the end before entering windows) there's an option on the opposite side of "Next" in small text to skip that...it'll work for few seconds and then enter windows where it'll be activated... i just did it.
I highly respect your work @Daz, but be patient and make conclusions after Jul 29, OK? Just wait until Jul 29 when all MS pages about free upgrade goes live. Leaving for China .........
I think you'll all find the 29th is one big disappointment, other than a few pages popping up on their website explaining what we already know nothing at all will change. The Windows update offer of Windows 10 will gradually trickle down to pc's on the waiting list over the next few months (they have to be doing it slowly for bandwidth reasons, although it seems Windows updates are shared peer to peer now also which I would say was done in anticipation of the millions of 3.x gig downloads for the windows 10 free upgrade) but other than that, nothing will change. I don't see the excitement of waiting until the 29th, for most people here, that time has been a gone a over a week ago. Kms version won't change, the activation's of already activated legit copies won't change. Nothing!!! so no need to get all stressed about waiting! Daz is right.
Win 10 from 29 Jul will be leaked here, so no one has to wait for their reserved copy, the same copy will leak here at MDL
I agree with everything except the sequence, I am going back to check that I am not confused but I have noted: If you take the qualifying OS OFFLINE and Upgrade to Win 10 then only @ activation is the HW# validated and stored on the activation server. The INSTALLATION ID of the Qualifying OS could be stored during upgrade and then the HW ID extracted and compared against the Win 10 HW ID. If the Hardware ID comparison is within tolerance then the SPP flags the installation as legit and MS activation servers store the HW# for future activations. AFAIK the Installation ID is just an encryption of your PK and Hardware ID with a checksum digit being the last digit in each group. XP had 5 digits in each group but has since been changed to 6 digits in each group. There was a paper released on XP Activation ID but I have not seen any additional info since 2001.
Windows 10 activation failed for a dozen people that were activated via OEM SLP on Windows 7 but had no network access before upgrading. It simply didn't activate even when connected to the internet after the upgrade was completed. After they reinstalled Windows 7, connected to the internet and then performed the upgrade it activated every single one of them though. It might be different for Windows 8.x PC's as their activation channels are near identical. They decode keys the same way, both use MSDM tables etc.