Windows 10: What happens to those free Windows 10 upgrades after July 29, 2016?

Did you mean EULA maybe? Not COLA?

 

I'm talking about clean installs after that date, not upgrades. If your upgrading from an installed OS your reading the key from the registry anyway. And Windows 7 doesn't use OEM embedded keys anyway? If it's not installed, there is no key to read? Anyway, I guess we may as well wait and see what happens. I know what I would like to see happen.

 

MS never said free upgrades for life. The said FREE updates which means once you upgrade to Windows 10 updates are free. Updates are security and functional changes. The free UPGRADE offer announced to be ending on July 29 th but I see MS extending that.

 

Again, alphanumeric.

All I am saying this can be changed and will be changed regarding the new rules that are emailed to Partners and Internal Staff,

Example: all of the products with in MSDN and keys will only activate this group. and the folks in Ent. with mac purchased services. and the single pc or device user will be provided their own licence out side of MSDN and these MSDN keys will not activate or except any keys/activations outside MSDN..


" just tighter control and better management this is the primary reason why TechNet got flushed "

 

@orlbuckeye.

I know I just used it as an example " free upgrade for life"

They should extend it for the rest of the year " if I was them " free advertising doesn't hurt another marketing bill out of the way if they leave it this promotion till Jan 01 2017

 

I see what your saying, I just wanted to clarify I wasn't using an MSDN key in this instance, that's all. MSDN or not had no bearing on what happened on my clean install. All current Windows 10 install media does the same thing.

 

Well whether there is an embedded key or not when upgrading the process checks if the upgraded version is genuine. Once it's detemined it's genuine the digital entitlement takes place.

I'm was technet member when it went away *Sad. I had 2 pc's that had technet key that upgraded.

 

@alphanumeric.

Let me share you this " its really messed up and has been for awhile being in the inside of all this " and hopefully it all gets resolved

 

Its all in the hands going forward to our CEO what will happen its his call " lets just hope he makes the right choices at the right time "

There has been lots of hush hush the last 6 months " lets wait and see what is in the works "

 

That's the thing though. I'll just run one more thing by you and then let this whole thing drop. Assume I have never installed Windows 10 on my laptop. It came from the factory with Windows 8.0 Core. I wait until after the 29 th and then decide to buy Windows 10 Pro. I put the DVD in and run the setup. Instead of 10 Pro I get 10 Home. No prompt for a key and no prompt to select Home or Pro. It read and used the 8 core key. The free upgrade is over though so it will not get a digital entitlement. The key in use will be the generic Home key. It will fail to activate. Is that right? I know what to do next but I bet you a lot of your basic PC users won't and will have to call Microsoft to sort it out. And be not to happy about it. If it had rejected the windows 8 key I would have been prompted to select home or Pro, and prompted to enter a product code. A much better scenario IMHO.

 

@alphanumeric.

That's really strange something doesn't add up... and I would call support something didn't register correctly on the MS side

"activations are automated"

MS servers, give a new licence and activate and store your activation and ' Q ' numbers on a separate system that are interconnected

there is a structure of inventory and the system assigns you what version is compatible for your device and this can go wrong and undermine or oversee the process and give you a lower level of request

 

In order to have the firmware key not being recognized, they have to remove the Windows/System32/spp/tokens/pkeyconfig/pkeyconfig-downlevel.xrm-ms file.
In addition, the base pkeyconfig.xrm-ms still has Win 8 OEM Core (NB: not retail nor any 8.1 nor Pro) key signatures - so they will have to clean that up first.

 

@Superfly.

Or back up what is important and format your current drive and install a fresh copy of Win 7 or Windows 8/8.1 and you will get upgraded to Win 10 as long as you have hard drive space.

A virus or hardware changes can also kick down your activation or give you problems in the upgrade process

 

Just to be clear, Windows 10 OEM do use product keys. But they are like OEM keys always have been. They are blocked on Microsoft's servers. The computer you buy with Windows 10 installed does not use digital entitlement. That means that after the drop dead date this summer we will go back to 95% of consumer copies of Windows 10 being product-key self-activated just like in the past. Also, if you purchase Windows 10 from the Windows Store and receive it by electronic software delivery rather than in the mail or over the counter it will be digitally entitled and not product-key activated. See the Microsoft paper at

Activation in Windows 10 - Windows Help

 

@Cbarnhorst.

Cbarnhorst that will be all changed right after Windows 2016 gets out of the way and updated system wide

" Like I said the COLA will be re-written and modified more then any Windows upgrade will ever be "

MS made that very clear that there will be changes going forward at end user level through the current and updated COLA user policies this is the only built in tool that overrides everything when needed and used by MS to do whatever they want when you press agree with their terms