@Yen Following Yen's steps and after obtaining GenuineTicket.xml on a Win 7 Home computer, is it possible to then install and activate Win 10 Pro on the same machine as digital entitlement? Just curious... Thanks!
I did say that it was a good idea. The online validation site has become hit or miss for Win 7, never did work for Win 8.x, but a lot of people in this thread still think it is something mandatory that they really need to do before moving on to the next step. Maybe they will realize it is not if they hear it from you.
The validation worked without issues for me... MS even offered a free subscription to Security Essentials... For being a genuine customer (who used Daz loader)
I seem to remember a time when Win 7 users were redirected to the validation page before they were allowed to download MSE ... (or maybe I am just getting too old and my memory is failing) Then again, I know I have downloaded mseinstall directly in the last few weeks.
No I think you are right on the validation, but right now and for the 2 to 3 years I have been using it it has been free and no validation required, unless they are checking in the background
What remained unclear is about drivers update. I mean, do we really need to update drivers to activate Windows 10? If yes, which drivers and when? Before or after generating genuine ticket? Before or after connecting to Internet to activate Windows 10? Known fact: all drivers have W7 version but not all of them still have W10 version.
Driver update MAY be important if you have some devices w/o a driver or some devices using generic drivers instead of the ones WU would update to. Say generic VGA instead of Nvidia/AMD/Intel, or missing network adapters, or generic AHCI diver Instead of Intel/Amd/Via/Whatever raid drivers (if you mind to use them in W10) If, instead W7 has already all the drivers detected correctly updating them would be pointless
Use WindowsUpdate minitool after regular windows update finishes installing all updates. the minitool finds all the missing drivers (usually)
With regards to drivers, all you really need is network for internet access while the ticket is generated. Even without drivers the hardware id is there..