I had a legit windows 7 pro oem install on a bootcamp partition on my mac. I upgraded that to windows 10 and it succeeded. I also use my bootcamp partition as a bootcamp virtual machine in vmware fusion and discovered that windows 10 will be activated when I am directly booted in to the partition but will not be activated while booting in vmware. From what I've been reading this is a common problem with the free upgrade activations. What I did to get around this was use the microsoft toolkit and use the ex-activator. Now I'm activated in both direct boocamp boot and in vmware fusion. I'm hoping this issue is fixed in the upcoming release of vmware fusion 8. I'm wondering if it's possible to undo the microsoft toolkit and revert back to my "free upgrade activation" without doing a clean install.
Windows 10 free upgrade is based on Hardware ID (motherboard mainly) where an existing windows 7 or 8 is activated. So Hardware ID of the real motherboard of your mac was used to activate your windows 10. When you boot your Windows 10 into Vmware, the Hardware ID isn't the same because this is a virtual motherboard so windows 10 can't be activated by MS Servers. My solution was : Make full image backup of your boot camp partition ( Acronis or other ...) boot vm with win7 iso to install win7 , then upgrade to windows 10 to register your Hardware ID to MS Server. Then restore your boot camp partition.
I tried a similar method and I could never get windows 10 activated in both. What I did was set up the bootcamp vm, remove the bootcamp drive and configure a virtual hd and install win 7 on that and upgrade to 10. Remove the virtual hd and add the bootcamp partition back. Win 10 would then be activated in vmware but not in direct boot.
virtual machines have different UUID/MAC addresses than normal machines and also different from other virtual machines. You can't simply activate with kms and then remove kms and suddenly have the vm be on MS's servers as a legit upgrade. You have to do the whole process of installing 7, activating, and upgrading to 10 while online in the vm.
You do the same method as @eradicator006 , but in reverse order. You must have to do upgrade with real machine AND virtual machine , to register / send your hardware id to MS Servers. One HWID for Real Motherboard , another HWID for Virtual Machine Motherboard. You can do an upgrade to just register your hardware id , then restore your backup'd real windows 10 system , then it will reactivate . Sorry for my english ...
That is what I did. I activated real install first then installed win 7 to a new virtual hd in my bootcamp virtual machine and upgraded to 10. The virtual machine activated successfully. I then added back the physical bootcamp partition to the virtual machine and win 10 was activated in vmware but no longer activated in direct boot. Windows 10 says "Connect to internet to activate". I try to manually activate and I get error 0xC004C003 saying the key is blocked. I think this is happening because I used an OEM version of windows 7 pro for the upgrade. If I had the retail version then things may work properly.
okay, I was focus on case with slp oem keys ... so it seems microsoft tracking one oem/retail key with one windows 10 machine , technically it's possible. I havn't experience yet with oem/retail key free upgrade ...
I have even tried using daz windows loader on windows 7 then upgrading to 10 and I can only get it to activate on 1 "machine" (vmware vm OR bootcamp) at a time. For now I'll just stick with the KMS method. It seems to be working fine. Once fusion 8 comes out I'll test a clean install of 10 and see if I can get it to activate in both bootcamp direct and virtually.