I installed W10 to an old desktop I had. At install-time, I selected no product key at this time and then selected Home (choices were Home and Pro). Installed W10, and afterwards I wasn't activated. I hit troubleshooting, it said something about upgrading my edition of Windows since I had a Pro key tied to that computer for some reason, went through with it, rebooted, and now I'm activated on Pro. I signed in with a MS account. I didn't select Insider until after the edition upgrade. I didn't purchase a W10 Pro key. I'm almost certain I've never had a legitimate key for any edition of Windows I had on that computer. Any ideas as to why this computer has Pro?
Basically you had a Windows 10 Pro Digital License attached to your Desktop. So after installing the correct version it got activated.
Yeah that makes sense, but I don't really know why this computer would have a W10 Pro digital license attached to it I don't recall doing anything special with this machine, and I definitely didn't purchase W10 on it.
Redmond bosses want Windows 10 on as many machines as possible to show on their Q4 report. Soon you can "digitally entitle" that old typewriter you got hidden in your attic
The only 4 reasons you would get a 10 pro activated on that machine would be: 1. The system had Win 8.1 Pro pre-installed, with an oemm key for 8.1 Pro 2. You once did an upgrade from 7SP1 Pro or Ultimate/8.1 pro/MCE to 10 pro OR used a legit 7 SP1 Ulti-Pro/8.x Pro-MCE key to activate and established a digital license 3. You used a legit 7 SP1 Ulti-Pro/8.x Pro-MCE key to activate and established a digital license. 4. You have installed 10 Pro in the past and logged in with your insider account and it got linked (in the past it was possible to activate (insider editions) by only using the Insider account to login). But 1 can't be the reason because while installing win 10, using a Multiple Editions iso (Home/Pro), it wouldn't give you a choice (without using an ei.cfg or pid.txt for pro). That leaves option 2/3 and 4 to be, most likely, the reason you've 10 Pro activated. My question is: what exactly was the troubleshooters txt about the reason why your system would have a Pro license tied to it?
1. Desktop was custom-built with a motherboard pre-W8 (no UEFI) 2. I don't exactly recall upgrading from 7 or 8.1 to 10 on this machine, but if anything, I did have an activated W7 and a legit 8.1 key around; could be possible it ended up on this motherboard/computer at some point 3. Didn't enter any keys 4. I had W10 Pro I think on an unrelated desktop that had a legit 8.1 key and was an Insider at the time The W10 image I used was 14393 from Microsoft, no modifications (just extracted straight to a flash drive). As for the troubleshooter text, I'm not sure exactly I'll likely end up doing a reinstall though and I'll take note to grab a screenshot or something at some point.