[Not working anymore] How to upgrade from W7/8.1 without going through the complete upgrade process

Hello Yen - I've just re-installed Windows 7 Pro from a backup image so I'm back to the original starting point. Later today I'm going to try installing/activating Windows 10 once more and I'll follow your four new recommendations. I'll report back whether I succeed or fail.

 

Ok ; guys i think i have located xml file contains windows 10 activation license information about Hardware : C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\ClipSVC\Archive\Apps\d66b5168-ed70-3805-9a3b-d6ece40c7074.xml

I think is that because the description he talk about Lincense info category : ''OS License''.

You can see what is License Category and you can see What is number of Device ID is autorished. and other information.

 

post yours so we can take a look? im at work, cant access my win10 at home right now..

 

Waiting back in you home and you see. I cant upload this because this file contains personnal informations about my computer.

 

just edit the personal informations (delet or take a print of the file opened and erase the personal infos). can you?

 

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victorius: I can confirm, that's the xml file indeed. Just checked on my windows.

Ah, one add-on for the topic...
I did some tests using a machine that come with slic 2.1 info on bios...
Installed Windows 7, installed eth driver, did the genuine test.
Rebooted the PC, got into Windows 7 and launched Windows 10 setup from a pendrive.
Once Windows 10 setup begins, I've used ALT-F10 and launched diskpart, wipped the drive, exited diskpart and closed the prompt.
Back to Windows 10 install, created new partitions and installed 10 normally, skipping keys.
Result: Windows 10 NOT activated, even after a few reboots... So the upgrade is indeed using some data from Windows 7 install!

I tought all it needed was cached in RAM and the setup was checking at launch.

 

Ok; perfect. What do you think ?

Very interesting. You think we can bypass this process ?

 

I dont know what You think but it seems like what ive said before. The "check for activation" is indeed offline and windows 10 just send the "validated" ticked so microsoft can register it and send back activation status for the installed win 10 on the machine that provided the offlive ticked.

It seems to be possible to do what I was talking about before... Some dev can talk a little bit about it? Some ideas?

 

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FWIW: I had a stab at decrypting the Hwid, but getting the "bad data" error - meaning the downlevel key is not the correct public key - may have another cert/hash - probably server side.


Updated script to show the various bits.

Code:

$Path = $PSScriptRoot + "\GenuineTicket.xml"

[xml]$GT = Get-Content ($Path)

$node = $GT.genuineAuthorization.genuineProperties.properties

$Split = $node -split (';') 

if (($Split[0] -like '') -or ($Split[1].StartsWith("OA3"))) {

    $SessionID = $Split[2] -replace ("SessionId=")
}
else {
    $SessionID = $Split[0] -replace ("SessionId=")
}

$Decoded = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetString([System.Convert]::FromBase64String($SessionID))

$Split = $Decoded -split (';') 

$HwID = $Split[4] -replace ("Hwid=")

$HwID = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetString([System.Convert]::FromBase64String($HwID))

$Path = $Path -replace ("GenuineTicket.xml", "SessionID.txt")

$key = $GT.genuineAuthorization.genuineProperties.signatures.signature.key

$downlevelGTkey = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetString([System.Convert]::FromBase64String($key))


"SessionID:`n" + $Decoded -replace (';',"`n") | Set-Content $Path

"Hwid is RSA-SHA256 encrypted!:`n" + $HwID |  Add-Content $Path

"`nDownlevelkey:`n" + $key |  Add-Content $Path

"`nKey is RSA-SHA256 encrypted!:`n" + $downlevelGTkey |  Add-Content $Path

Invoke-Item $Path

 

I think the other files has been linked to windows activation is pkeyconfig ; because when you use KMS this files has been modified. The files has been located in : C:\Windows\System32\spp\tokens\pkeyconfig.

 

Thank you Yen, Daz, Blinky and anyone else that had a hand in figuring this out

I have had Win7 with Daz's loader running on my OLD HP computer for quite some time now and never got any invite from M$ to upgrade. Not that I would have accepted and did an upgrade. I don't like the upgrade process. Been there done that!! More trouble than it's worth. But I still wanted to see what all the hype was about with Win10.

Along comes this information and thought I would give it a try yesterday.

BINGO!!

Worked like a charm and I now can play with Win10 for a while. It's on a separate partition and I still have my XP and Win7 to use (untouched). But for the little time I have tried it out yesterday, I must say I was not impressed and will not stay with it long I fear!

But again let me thank everyone involved for this and the chance to at least try it.

 

Hello Yen and everyone else - I'd like to report that on the second attempt I was successful. Windows 10 activated as soon as I made my internet connection. I did make one small change this time around. Immediately after completing the installation and arriving on the desktop, I rebooted - I did not do this the first time! Then I copied genuineticket.xml to the path C:\Program Data\Microsoft\Windows\Clipsvc\Genuine Ticket. Immediately after doing this, I rebooted once more, then I made my internet connection and checked the activation status. Success!

One thing I did notice - after activating, I checked the folder and genuineticket.xml was gone. This is normal I assume?

I'd like to thank everyone involved in this thread. Until now, this machine was in limbo. Even though I had installed all the necessary updates to Windows 7 Pro, and had reserved the upgrade, I had never received the message from Microsoft to proceed with the upgrade to Windows 10. This has solved the issue.

 

I finally got round to trying this myself. After going through the whole process I found my machine was not getting activated. Attempts to force activating resulted in the message '.... key has been blocked...' as others have seen as well.
After carefully reading through this thread I realized I had activated the Original windows 7 installation but never explicitly 'validated' it since I wasnt aware that this was required.
Thinking I was going to have to start from scratch with a fresh win7 installation and it being past midnight already I just left the machine. The machine kept running overnight and was connected to the internet.

For some reason I decided to pull out the system information page once more before starting the win7 re-installation. To my surprise it now said it is activated.

Could it be that the activation servers were just busy wen I first tried to activate ?
Even if so, why would I then get a seemingly unrelated error message ?
How important is this explicit validation ? Could it be that during the brief period my win7 installation was connected to the internet the validation occurred automatically ?

That's alot of questions

 

It could be that, or it could be that the hashes didn't match enough due to the drivers that were installed. If you didn't manually trigger a windows update then a scheduled update may have fixed the issue.

Nobody knows exactly how Microsoft are matching machines and how reliable it is. It is possible that depending on what hardware you have in your machine then it might need need more drivers than other machines do.

You were blocked from using that key, if you weren't blocked you would be activated.

I don't think so, when you do it manually you have to download software using IE and it makes you confirm quite a lot. However if you have the ticket you can check yourself if it was activated.

Nobody knows. They have the ticket and they can revoke the activation at any time they chose if they think you aren't legitimately activated. I don't know if it includes when you installed windows 7, but they know what edition. Seeing people install windows 7 ultimate and then Windows 10 professional straight away is going to be quite obvious. They could make you send in a picture of a COA as proof if they wanted to check. But I suspect they will wait at least until the free upgrade ends before even considering doing anything.

It's possible, but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle. In a year you'll need a new way of activating new machines anyway.

 

I'm not sure if the reboot is necessary. I'm pretty sure I have done it a few times without a reboot. But the best successful test I have had was using my CLUpdater.exe file during the SetupComplete.cmd portion of $OEM$. It successfully activated the computer during windows setup and was fully activated one I got to the desktop for the first time. CLUpdater disables the ClipSVC just before it copies the GenuineTicket.xml. Then when When Windows booted to the desktop for the first time Windows Setup must have Started the ClipSVC itself and properly activated since the GenuineTicket.xml was found. ;-)