Windows 10: Windows 7 upgrade dilemma

That is a completely different issue - we are not talking about duplication of licences... just getting digital entitlement for later use... it's really not that hard to understand, with all due respect.

 

You cannot get Digital Entitlement unless the OS is activated.
You cannot get the OS activated unless you have a valid product key that is NOT in use.

Installing Win 10 in a separate partition but using the same Win 7 product key will not get activated.

 

OMG... I give up! Do as you will.

 

I'll take a stab at this one. To be honest I doubt you can do what you would want to do and get a free upgrade to 10. The best plan right now is to upgrade to 10 and try it out for the 30 days and see if you like it or not. If it's not what you want you can roll back to 7. Or if you make a back up of your current PC with 7 you can roll back at any time before or after the 30 days.

Another thought is to try Classic shell if you don't like the new start menu. It's going to be almost the same as what you have now.

HTH
Jeff
PS, and welcome to the forums. *Smile

 

Thanks. Unfortunately I think you may be right. My main concern about upgrading to W10 is multiple driver incompatibility. I only upgraded from Vista to W7 last year and that was fairly problematic, but this will be way worse. As I said, ideally I would like to stick with W7 and only upgrade to W10 in a few years if my laptop is still working, but as there doesn't appear to be any consensus here how to do that it would seem it's not possible.

 

I have to go along with your thinking on this. If you had trouble before you might encounter some again.
My thought would be keep 7 and just do a hardware upgrade in Dec 2019, it would be about the right time.

And happy computing.

Jeff

 

safe01

Maybe I can shed some light on this. First backup your windows 7 system (There are instructions on the forum on how to do this). Next, install windows 10 upgrade. It should be digitally activated. Then you can restore your windows 7 and then upgrade or do a clean install of windows 10 at anytime. This is not a step by step instruction but read further before doing this but still do the backup of windows 7 and backup any data you might need.

To All,
It actually depends on the type of windows 7 disk safe01 has. If it is an upgrade disk, safe01 will have to upgrade 10 first, then do a clean install of 10. If the windows 7 disk is a retail disk, then safe01 can delete all partitions and do a clean install of windows 10. Sometimes the windows 7 key won't work until after windows 10 install is completed-my experience. Note, no key needed if upgrade from 7.

 

It says Windows 7 Upgrade Kit on the packaging.

 

If I understand the upgrade requirement correctly & you have that windows 7 upgrade kit installed. You will need to upgrade from windows 7 to windows 10 and see if it activates. If it doesn't activate, you can call Microsoft and tell them you upgrade from vista to 7 then to windows 10. If the activation completes or Microsoft gets your computer activated. Then you can do a clean install right away or you can wait. Just ignore the request(s) for the key during windows 10 clean install. Once 10 is up and running it will see you have digital entitlement. Note, if Microsoft gives you a new key, you might have to change to that key after a clean install is completed.

 

Thanks. I don't know if I want to do all that though. I'll probably just upgrade to W10. Thanks for the info though