Big stack of Win7 keys, any way to turn them to Win10?

R

RAD

Limp Gawd
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Feb 12, 2009
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So I have a big stack of Windows 7 keys purchased some time ago. Never been activated, etc. From some of the reading I have been seeing it more or less looks like upgrading these to windows 10 keys has to be done on the machine they are going to be on, right?

If I understand correctly, due to the hardware hashing that comes along with the transformation from Win7 to Win10, the "key" gets tied to the specific set of hardware it is upgraded on?

Am I correct in thinking this means you can't just run Win7 keys through some sort of input or process to turn them into Win10 keys?
 
You'd have to clean install Windows 7 (whichever version it is, Home or Pro), activate it, then upgrade to Windows 10 (matching the version, Home or Pro) for each key you have and each time on a unique machine, that's the process. Once that's done, you could then clean install Windows 10 on the machines - obviously as just noted they have to be different machines - you won't be able to get multiple Windows 10 licenses on the same machine so so so...

It's a rather complicated process, no doubt, and unless you've got a bunch of spare computers that could stand upgrades then it's not going to be of much use at this point in time. This Windows 10 offer from Microsoft is for upgrading to Windows 10 only - clean installs can be done after that initial upgrade installation and again, it's got to be on unique machines since you can't tie the hardware hash to multiple installations on the same hardware. One key = one install = one upgrade = one Windows 10 license, that's pretty much how it goes.
 
This is one of several threads here where people talk about 'converting keys'. There is no converting a 7 or 8 key into a 10 key.

Who's passing around this bad information?

If you want to install 10 on a machine you need to clean install 7 then use the Windows 10 media creation tool to upgrade to 10. You are not upgrading a key.
 
One thing I havne't looked into yet....my home system has windows 10 insider preview installed and activated with an ms account to get insider upgrades.

To test installing 10240 RTM, I did a clean install to another SSD (all previous drives unplugged). As it so happend, windows was activated by default. So maybe my hardware is registered somehow, and that's how they activated me? I never entered a key. And I was not performing upgrades from previous versions.

I do suspect in most cases, you're going to have to physically install and activate windows 7 on a system (will it work in a VM?) and then do the upgrade so the windows 10 key has something to stick to...but I'm guessing you'll be SOL if you have to move to another machine.
 
Most people don't realize this but, if you signed up for the Insider preview and installed any Insider preview build it generated the hardware hash that Microsoft is using now on given machines to lock in the activation. If you completed the "Reserve a copy of Windows 10" thing that too was just an activation process to lock in the hardware hash of the given machine (for those that didn't join or participate in the Insider preview).

Windows 10 Product Keys are only going to be necessary for Retail full versions or Enterprise installs - anything else is pretty much going to be an upgrade install on top of a qualifying legit activated product like Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 so a Product Key for Windows 10 is pointless in such situations.

It's also the reason that people installing the upgrade of Windows 10 and even then going a step further and installing Windows 10 clean afterward are all seeing the same exact product key when they do some kind of extraction - it won't matter if you extract the key or not because it can't be used to activate it. Windows 10 is only available as an upgrade presently (aside from Retail full versions or Enterprise) so, again, the Product Key is meaningless - it's the hardware hash that matters now.

As for changing hardware later on, that remains to be seen. I believe and have heard from friends of mine that work at Microsoft (some Tier 3 support personnel and a few Partner support techs) that Microsoft will still work the way it always has in the past: if you do some kind of major upgrade to your hardware or you have a hardware failure they will work with you if you call them to get you situated and activated on the new hardware. But some folks think it's set in stone that things are different now and Microsoft will basically require anyone and everyone to buy a new license in such situations. Even with Windows 10 being free as an upgrade for the first year, I seriously doubt they'll be telling people months from now if they upgrade major components or have hardware failures that require replacing major components that they're SOL and they have to buy a new license.

I don't think Microsoft will stoop that low...
 
RAD said:
So I have a big stack of Windows 7 keys purchased some time ago. Never been activated, etc. From some of the reading I have been seeing it more or less looks like upgrading these to windows 10 keys has to be done on the machine they are going to be on, right?

If I understand correctly, due to the hardware hashing that comes along with the transformation from Win7 to Win10, the "key" gets tied to the specific set of hardware it is upgraded on?

Am I correct in thinking this means you can't just run Win7 keys through some sort of input or process to turn them into Win10 keys?
Click to expand...

Interesting question. What if you did completely independent installs of Win 10 on separate HDDs or just partitions or even VMs? And then you tried to do clean installs. Would MS recognize each drive or partition as a separate and valid Win 10 install? for VMs?
 
Swapping out hard drives or storage or using VMs wouldn't be a workable solution: the hard drives or storage are still tied to the same hardware hash (which the storage is just a small part of with respect to creating the hash) and VMs aren't transferable to bare metal hardware at all so that would be a waste of Windows 7 activations all around.

My suggestion to the OP (which I should have made earlier) is just hang on to the Windows 7 keys for the time being, you've got a full year for the Windows 10 upgrade possibilities. Maybe donate some of them to local charities, sell 'em, who knows, but don't waste 'em with premature activations just for Windows 10 anytime soon.
 
Tiberian said:
I don't think Microsoft will stoop that low...
Click to expand...

Interesting. So they are maintaining a giant hardware database...I guess that makes sense considering I noticed in my live.com account that I could "remove devices" from those assigned to me, ala Android.

In the case of MS, all the more reason to use fake info to make your MS account. you'll also need a reliable fake info backup email....these are getting harder to make as most places now require SMS verification which invariably ties it back to your identity.

Anonymity on the internet, for the average joe, is dead.

Tiberian said:
Swapping out hard drives or storage or using VMs wouldn't be a workable solution: the hard drives or storage are still tied to the same hardware hash (which the storage is just a small part of with respect to creating the hash) and VMs aren't transferable to bare metal hardware at all so that would be a waste of Windows 7 activations all around.

My suggestion to the OP (which I should have made earlier) is just hang on to the Windows 7 keys for the time being, you've got a full year for the Windows 10 upgrade possibilities. Maybe donate some of them to local charities, sell 'em, who knows, but don't waste 'em with premature activations just for Windows 10 anytime soon.
Click to expand...

In my case, swapping hard drives did not affect my auto-activation status. I bet it's tied to mobo and first ethernet MAC
 
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