Windows 10: Old windows key never used

Hi.


I have an old asus laptop that came with windows 7 home installed. As far i remember i probably never used that windows home since at the time i had acess to windows 7 pro from my college. I did a clean install of windows 7 pro and using the pro version i upgraded to windows 10 pro a few years later. This old laptop as a sticker with a home edtion serial that i never used it.


On my recent asus laptop, which was bought with no windows, i decided to try out the key that’s in the sticker of my old asus laptop the serial of the home edition, windows version that i removed right after buying that old laptop. I downloaded windows 10 from microsoft, used that old serial and it worked just fine. Installed windows 10 home edition. I did not use any “trick”.

Contrary to what i’ve read across the internet it just worked. Can you explain me why did work without any trick? Can i still use it?


Ps: About any grammar error you may find in this post...English is not my native language and for some reason my keyboard tablet word correction is not showing up.

:)

 

Free upgrade still working using old keys


Windows 10 free upgrade offer still works. I tested today. First I installed and activated Windows 8.1 (I used an old Windows 8 key that had never been used) and after this I upgrade to Windows 10.

Windows 10 - Upgrade Installation - Windows 10 Forums

Note that Windows 10 upgrade installation does not accept Windows 7/8.x product key, so you need to select the option I'm reinstalling Windows 10 on this PC (see screenshot below).





You can also clean install Windows 10 and activate it directly with your unused Windows 7/8.x product key.

Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums

 

Need old Windows Start menu

Hi,

I realize that you need the old Windows start menu. I will try to help you with this issue.

You can click the hash icon located above the 3D Builder icon to check if that helps.

Suggest you to follow these steps to check if that helps:

• 
  Press Windows key + I to get the Settings screen.
  
• 
  Click on Personalization and click Start.
  
• 
  Enable the feature for “use start full screen”.
  

Keep us informed to help you further.

Thank you.

 

Need some help. Old HDD. New laptop.

Yes, that would be a favorable solution if possible. But it requires what I said as a first step. Once he gets booted into the OS, then he can either use it as is or try to recover the product key. I'm not saying he couldn't do what you said, I was replying to another post that suggested simply copy/pasting documents from the old hard drive.