Having Windows 7 for years now, I'm at this crossroads of staying on Windows 7 and just upgrading. There are many valid reasons to not upgrade, many of which that I'm sure that I share with other users. But I still want to have some options. I had previously installed Windows 10 during that free upgrade period on an old hard drive that had no business trying to run it (the stress probably caused it to slow down and die months later), after which I restored a Windows 7 image. So I'm assuming that I still have the ability to just download and install it now with no strings attached, unless things have changed since then. But there's one thing that might throw a wrench in the works. Back in 2018, I used DAZ Loader to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate. Would the use of DAZ Loader cause a problem with upgrading to Windows 10 due to the key not being official? Or would a Dual Boot not even be considered an "upgrade", technically? Any help with getting this done would be appreciated.
Dual boot is not an upgrade. Your win 10 HWID from the earlier upgrade from 7 to 10 will still be valid, as long as the hardware is not significantly changed (mobo/lan). Installing 10 after 7 in the dual boot scenario can (and most likely will) undo the loader's work, when booted into 7 you can re-run the loader to re-activate the win 7 install.
There's been no significant hardware changes like the motherboard or LAN. Another question: If I were to upgrade to Windows 10 instead of going the Dual Boot route, would my previous use of DAZ Loader to get Windows 7 Ultimate cause issues with an upgrade? I also have the option of making an image of my current W7 install to a backup drive and then restoring that if something goes wrong with the upgrade (which it could), which is why I'm also considering an upgrade as well.
So it actually would be an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro, with no issues for the activation process? If that's the case, I feel somewhat more comfortable with upgrading now. Obviously a Clean Install would be the most safe, but I'm weighing all of my options before I make a decision. I'll think on it. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade, and I could get a new SSD specifically for a clean install if I really wanted to. Thanks for answering my questions. I know it seems like I'm being overly careful about this, but I want all the info I can get.
Ok so I just installed windows 10 pro x64 and couldn't physically disconnect the windows 7 nvme drive before installing win 10. Should've deactivated it in BIOS... I can confirm that the Windows 10 installation on one drive rendered my windows 7 on another drive not genuine. The Win10 also totally replaced my win7 bootloader on the win7 drive?! Now every time I try to boot into my win7 drive, I keep getting a win10 BSOD 0xc000000f saying that my computer needs to be repaired and there's a problem with winloader.exe or whatever. What's interesting is if I press F9 at this blue screen to 'boot into another OS', the computer proceeds to boot into windows 7 normally. I can boot into win10 without problem (if I don't happen to encounter the infamous bugcode ndis wifi error that is). Anyone experienced this win 10 behavior before where it completely overwrites windows 7's bootloader and corrupts it? How to fix this? Thanks.