Ever since the official release of Windows 10 on July 29th, over 100 million PC users have upgraded their Windows 7/8.1 installations to Windows 10 using the free upgrade offer.
If you upgraded from Windows 7/8.1 to Windows 10 or plan to do so in near future, you probably are aware that you need to upgrade your current Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 installation to Windows 10 in order to get the free upgrade and it’s not currently possible to activate Windows 10 using your Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 product key.
This news came as a surprise to many people. Today (Oct 12, 2015) with the release of the new Windows 10 Insider Preview build 10565, Microsoft announced an important change in this new build which is related to the activation mechanism of Windows 10.
According to official statement of Microsoft:
If you upgraded from Windows 7/8.1 to Windows 10 or plan to do so in near future, you probably are aware that you need to upgrade your current Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 installation to Windows 10 in order to get the free upgrade and it’s not currently possible to activate Windows 10 using your Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 product key.
Microsoft’s decision not to let users activate Windows 10 using genuine Windows 7/8.1 key has forced many users upgrade their Windows 7/8.1installation to Windows 10 even if they wanted to perform a clean install of Windows 10 from ISO. Although once the Windows 7/8.1 installation is successfully upgraded to Windows 10 and activated, it’s possible to easily reinstall Windows 10, many users are experiencing activation issues after the clean install.
Actually when Microsoft released Windows 10 final RTM version to public, they announced the free Windows 10 upgrade offer which allows existing Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 users to upgrade their computers to Windows 10 absolutely free within one year of Windows 10 launch. But to take the benefit of this offer, users need a genuine and already activated Windows 7 or 8/8.1 OS installed in their computers and only after that they can upgrade the existing Windows version to Windows 10.
In this free upgrade offer, when a user upgrades the existing Windows version to Windows 10, the product key of the prior Windows version gets automatically associated with Windows 10 and Microsoft automatically activates Windows 10 as soon as you connect to Internet.
Related Post : Download Windows 10 April 2018 (1803) Update ISO
Some people like me prefer clean installation of new Windows versions. To perform Windows 10 clean installation, you need to first upgrade existing Windows 7 or 8/8.1 to Windows 10 to associate your existing product key with Windows 10 and after that you can format and clean install Windows 10. It'll automatically activate itself as you associated your computer machine ID with Windows 10 successfully at Microsoft servers.
Some people like me prefer clean installation of new Windows versions. To perform Windows 10 clean installation, you need to first upgrade existing Windows 7 or 8/8.1 to Windows 10 to associate your existing product key with Windows 10 and after that you can format and clean install Windows 10. It'll automatically activate itself as you associated your computer machine ID with Windows 10 successfully at Microsoft servers.
To activate Windows 10 by entering your Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 product key:
Step 1: Open Settings app.
Step 2: Click Update and security.
Step 3: Click Activation. Click Change product key button.
Step 4: Enter your Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 product key and then click Next button to activate your Windows 10.
While clean installing Windows 10 from bootable USB, DVD or ISO, when are prompted to enter the product key, simply enter the genuine product key of Windows 7, Windows 8 or 8.1 to activate your copy of Windows 10.
And if you can’t find your Windows 7/8.1 product key, please refer to our how to recover Windows 8/8.1 product key from BIOS and how to recover Windows 7 product key from registry guides.
Our how to check the activation status of Windows 10 and how to check why your copy of Windows 10 was not activated guides might also help you.
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