Windows 10: Check to see if a computer has been previously upgraded to Windows 10

Hi all

I have a burning question that I have not been able to find an answer to...

How do I find out if a computer has been previously upgraded to Windows 10 from 7/8/8.1 and has a digital licence (after it has been restored to the original OS)?

I've been in touch with Microsoft and their support is less than convincing.

(Long story short, I have bought a job lot of laptops that have been restored to factory settings. Before I sell them on, it would be nice to have them running on Windows 10 for free (if they were upgraded by the original owners and subsequently have a digital licence, requiring no product key.) I don't want to install Windows 10 from scratch to find out I cannot activate it and I have deleted the old Windows OS installation and recovery partition).

Thanks!

:)

 

how do I check to see if my computer has been hacked

Hi, Lornalman

Did you recently installed a program in your PC?

Regards,

Kaedon

 

how do I check to see if my computer has been hacked

 

Welcome to TenForums @thecritter99

You could swap out the hard drive for a blank one and try a clean install on that. However, recent reports are that MS is still activating upgrades for free, despite the offer officially having ended. For how much longer is anyone's guess...

 

since any digital license is stored on MS activation server - one would have to install windows 10

 

Hi 99,
As youve factory reset them,

try this little checker compliments of Superfly
not optomistic thou

https://github.com/Superfly-Inc/Show...howKeyPlus.zip


Roy

 

Thanks both for your replies. Am I right in thinking the licenses are embedded in the system BIOS for activation/verification purposes (and then validated with the activation server?) It would be very useful to detect if a digital licence is embedded in the BIOS's of my machines, although I suspect this is not possible!

 

Roy, MASSIVE thanks for that - I think that is what I am after. I guess I am looking for an OEM key? Will play around with it and see if I can work out if the OEM keys are Windows 10 related.

 

More useful info here...

ShowKeyPlus

 

showkey will show oem key or oem marker - not prior windows 10 activation, if windows 10 removed
Unless it came with windows 10

 

Makes perfect sense. I guess Microsoft are the only ones who possess such information. Am I right?

(Unless of course there is some way of seeking out the digital licence from the BIOS or whatever a Windows 10 upgrade leaves behind that the Microsoft activation server detects)

 

MS uses a Hardware Hash for the PC to record activation
Nothing to find on PC itself - only OEM marker, put there by OEM

what you looking for is just NOT there

 

Understood. Thanks for your reply (and the one on the other thread).

 

windows 8 and up - supports booting from VHD
create a windows 10 VHD on n external HDD and make the external HDD bootable..

Boot from the ExHDD and activate windows 10 - if the activation goes through > then you can safetly upgrade that PC's HDD

 

If the computer has a MS COA (Certificate of Authenticity) sticker on it with a Windows 7 product key, you should still be able to activate a matching Windows 10 on that computer by changing the product key to the one on the COA. If there is a Windows 8 product key stored in BIOS, the Windows 10 installation should pick that up automatically and activate automatically.

Again, we don't know when MS is going to turn off this capability, but they have not yet.