Windows 10: not sure whether the "digital key linked to my account" came from my free 8.1->10 upgrade...

So, this is a bit of a weird situation....


I bought 8.1 Student edition, with a product key based license, back in 2015. I'm PRETTY sure I eventually did the free Win10 upgrade thing on that install, but not positive.


I also just realized through searching for emails about when I did that upgrade that, while I didn't find any email about that, I DID remember that I wound up buying a retail license straight from Microsoft's brick and mortar stores back in 2018. IIRC my boot disk failed completely, I was without a smartphone at the time long story so I decided to just buy a retail copy of 10 preloaded on USB so I could easily install to my replacement drive without having to borrow someone else's computer to set up the install media... Also I had long since lost my key for 8,1 and didn't realize I could easily find it on my MS account purchase history. Bad use of $120 but whatever I was in a panic and this was my second time ever paying for Windows I was an Apple diehard for a loooooong time so I didn't know how that stuff worked, I just wanted to go to a couple stores immediately and have a working OS on a new drive as quickly as possible.


ANYWAY - I've heard that free upgraded copies of Win10 will show up as "digital licenses linked to your account," which my current system does - but that they are actually more restrictive with reactivations especially when it comes to motherboard upgrades.


Long story short - is there any way I can tell which license is actually attached to my account, the definitely full featured retail one or the free upgrade from 8.1 Student one that might have limited reactivations? I was messing around with the Win10 installer in December and even though I didn't actually let it get so far as to reinstall the OS, it still reset the date in my settings.


If I had the free upgrade license attached to my account previously, but then signed into my account on a system with a full retail Win10 license, is there any chance it would hold onto the "inferior" license? Is there any way to tell, short of having to deal with *shudders* phone support? Is there some way I can remove the license from my MS account temporarily, then put it back by signing back in from this machine? Because I'm quite sure THIS install is full retail win10 and not an upgrade, since the only reason I bought the retail copy was that that old license was, as far as I knew, lost and irreplaceable.


TL;DR: I'm probably overthinking this but I've had both an 8.1->10 Upgrade system and a system that installed a fresh Win10 retail copy logged into this account and I want to make sure the latter license is attached. Any way to tell the difference based on what the front end of the account website will show me or do I have to *shudder* call MS support and hope they even understand **** I'm asking? Is there an easy way to just remove the license linked to my account currently, and link again from this system which I know is the fresh retail Win10?

:)

 

Link Microsoft Account to Windows 10 Digital License  

This is what i get on step 2

 

key points of Tutorial "Link Microsoft Account to Windows 10 Digital "

Full title of tutorial is Link Microsoft Account to Windows 10 Digital License Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

We have a bunch of Win 10 Pro systems. All were upgrades from Retail Win 7 or Win 8. Three systems have just one Win 10 install each, and one multi-booting system has three separate Win 10 installs, in separate disk partitions. All these upgrades were created with just local accounts (for privacy reasons).

Last week, I re-installed the motherboard in one system after a repair (same board, just some chips replaced, maybe?) I had to re-activate. *Eek And with only a local account, I had to do an activation over the phone. *Sad I don't want to risk losing a license, so I want to get all these systems covered in a Microsoft Account before something else goes wrong.

So I read this this entire tutorial and I would like to validate if the following are true for the Creators Update:

• I can still use my local account for my daily work, as long as I create a separate admin account that I use to link the digital entitlement to a Microsoft Account.
• For that separate admin account, the password that I use to log into my system has to be the same as the Microsoft Account.
• If I have more than one admin account on a system, only one admin account can link that digital entitlement to a Microsoft Account.
• I can use just one Microsoft account to register with Microsoft all the digital entitlements across all our systems. That is, I can "manage" all my entitlements with just one Microsoft Account.
  
  Yes to this bullet? No? Cerebrus seems to saying NO in that thread. Others seem to think YES.

Thanks.

 

Loophole Lets You Freely Upgrade to Windows 10 After Offer Expiry

If you upgrade your 7 install to 10, which is worth it IMHO, make sure you link to a Microsoft Account. Otherwise you might not be able to easily regain the key if they block using 7 keys in the future.

You don't need to use the Microsoft account as your profile on so you can still bypass logging in at setup and creating a local account. All you gotta do to link your 10 account to your MS install (if you choose not to use your MS account as your profile), is to simply do the following:

• Click Start
• Click Settings
• Click Update and Security
• Click Activation
• As or with Admin permissions, click Add Account
• Login with MS Account credentials.

Then you should see a message that reads:

More info: How to reactivate Windows 10 after a hardware change | Windows Central , Link Microsoft Account to Windows 10 Digital License , Link a Microsoft Account to a Windows 10 license - gHacks Tech News