Windows 10: Win10 upgrade and a retail purchase of Win10 Pro- not the same.

As i said here we have the full version i wo0uld belive MS over anyone else myself.

 

We are just trying to get the OP to substantiate his statements (which he won't be a able to do because they are completely erroneous) or at least admit that he was completely wrong.

 

Yes i agree unless he can bring out fact which i doubt he can , microsoft own blog says we all have the full version of win 10 when we get it, therefore it would be taking MS to tell us we have 8+++ which we do not we all have win 10 and that's what it is.

 

Thanks everyone. I really messed up the original post, and badly. But the nice thing is that I learned a lot from the posts! Heh. I added edits to my original post but added edits to correct the mistakes that I made so that your comments could still be valid. It should be closer to what is really going on now. Let me know if I still have some parts wrong.

 

I was completely wrong!

 

Frankly, that surprised me a lot when I went to look up my MSDM a few days ago. Here is what I found:





No MSDM anymore. I just bought a new mobo a couple of months ago but used my SSD already loaded with Win10 insiders preview. It booted right up and activated. Did MS do a hash on my ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark 2 with a i7-4790K chip and decide to keep it? Since I never loaded in Win8.1 on the machine (I simply did not have to), perhaps that is why there is no MSDM table. Got me, but as you can see, it isn't there like it was on my old mobo.

 

Not every motherboard is going to have an embedded key by the way. If you buy a motherboard by itself like that it won't. It's only if its sold in a system by an OEM like Dell or ASUS etc. They modify it adding the Windows Product code etc. If every motherboard sold came with an embedded key you'd be getting Windows free with it. That motherboard never had the MSDM table to begin with. Microsoft isn't going to add or remove that type of info to your BIOS. For one thing it proprietary to the OEM. They'd never get permission to do it. Plus they don't want to be on the hook if what they did bricked your motherboard. That info isn't easily changed. I can flash the BIOS on my ASUS laptop and that section with the product code is untouched.

 

Thanks, another thing I did not know. Perhaps I never saw an MSDM table (but I thought I did, heh) as I never bought an OEM computer (except my son's MacBook Pro retina) . Of course, when I went to do a clean install on my computer with 8.1, I would always supply the serial number (as I would write it down beforehand). I never knew about the start of the use of the hash code so I never tried skipping the serial number. Actually, I remember that on older installs, you needed to put in a serial number or it would just stop the install. Going from Windows For Workgroups 311 to Win10 has been a journey through MS's myriad product activation schemes.

 

Remember TRSDOS boot discs for the TRS-80 (and cassette tapes if you couldn't afford the expansion interface)? That's how old I am :-}

 

Key prompt or no key prompt depends on what version of Windows your installing and the hardware your installing it on.

 

I read that the update is valid for the machine you updated only. Once you changed the machine read hardware Windows 10 update stops being free. Therefore, the update is Bur for this machine only.

 

Upgrade from OEM and that would be correct. Upgrade from retail and you are free to transfer it to other computers - one computer at a time only.

 

Just saw this thread is 5-day old (and completely wrong). Why are people bumping it? *Shock

For anyone that might still be confused, all you need to do is simply upgrade from activated-win7/8/8/1 to 10 just once, and then whenever you clean-install win 10 (from the ISO) in the future, skip the serial-key screen and it'll auto-activate later.

 

I think you need to differentiate between a free upgrade and a paid upgrade.

Windows - Microsoft

They tell you this about the free upgrade: "Once you upgrade, you have Windows 10 for free on that device". So I am not so sure about your interpretation.

 

I understand what the EULA says -- but I fail to see how that can even be possible! I mean, HOW are you going to "transfer the software" from one Windows PC to another?

You could make a backup image of PC #1 and "restore" that image to PC #2. But, after that, most likely, PC #2 won't boot because of driver differences. So, this method likely won't work.

Or ... you could do a clean-install of PC #2 from a Win10 ISO -- but this would be to a PC that had never been activated through an Upgrade, so as we've all read now (probably hundreds of times!), this will not activate. So, this method likely won't work, either.

If MS allowed us to activate Win10 using a product key, then we could use the second method and simply enter the product key -- but they don't allow that method.

So basically, the statement in the EULA is, at this time, just BS -- because you can't actually do it.