Can you get the upgrade but not install it for a year or more?

Winuser said:

As long as you upgrade within the year you can reinstall as many times as you want. If MS doesn't change their mind.

Yep, that's what I said. "I think we will definitely have to upgrade before the year is out."

Wynona said:

Yep, that's what I said. "I think we will definitely have to upgrade before the year is out."

I'm upgrading my desktop and my wife's laptop on day one. I've already upgraded my Windows 8.1.1 to Windows 10 TP build 10130. I did a system image before I upgraded. Plus I have another image that I made last month. I'm going to wait before I decide if I'm going to upgrade my laptops.

I don't think some of you understand that by upgrading to Win 10 you are not trading in a Win 7/8.* license for a new Win 10 license, you will be upgrading your Win 7/8.* license & key to a Win 10 license & key. The upgraded key will be the same as your Win 7/8.* key, there will be no going back (with the same license or key).

It's really not that complicated. If one does the free upgrade to 10 they can not use the qualifying OS. If they decide they don't like 10 they can uninstall it and reinstall the qualifying OS.

Winuser said:

It's really not that complicated. If one does the free upgrade to 10 they can not use the qualifying OS. If they decide they don't like 10 they can uninstall it and reinstall the qualifying OS.

That's my understanding too, Winuser.

Supposing the pc that you have upgraded to W10 has a motherboard failure, and assuming that your W7 or W8 was a full version, could you use the old Windows disk with a repaired pc?

tinmar49 said:

Supposing the pc that you have upgraded to W10 has a motherboard failure, and assuming that your W7 or W8 was a full version, could you use the old Windows disk with a repaired pc?

@tinmar49

That kind of a debate going on but here is what I understand at this moment, If the windows 7 or 8.1 you have have installed is the full retail version you will be able to transfer windows 10 once upgrade to 10. Now if you upgrade from an oem version of windows 7 or 8.1 and your motherboard fails then in most cases you will have to buy a windows 10 license.

tinmar49 said:

Supposing the pc that you have upgraded to W10 has a motherboard failure, and assuming that your W7 or W8 was a full version, could you use the old Windows disk with a repaired pc?

That's a hard one to predict, Tinmar. Microsoft has said that once you've installed Windows 10 it's yours for the supported life of the device you have it installed on. What that tells me is that once the device craters, Windows 10 cannot be installed on another computer.

The ongoing debate is whether you get to keep and reuse your Windows 7 or 8.1 license after you've upgraded to Windows 10. Historically, if you upgrade from, say, Windows Vista to Windows 7, your Windows Vista license is then no longer valid. Having said that, though, I was told by someone who had upgraded from Retail Windows 7 to Windows 8/8.1 that he called Microsoft and they said he could reuse his Windows 7 license.

Will what this person said prove to be true for everyone? I don't know, and would have to call Microsoft before I would chance doing it. And . . . I have no reason to believe that things didn't happen exactly as explained to me. So . . . Will this be the case with Windows 10? I dunno, but, consider this hypothetical scenario:

I have one retail copy of Windows 7. I have four machines with Windows Vista. I upgrade one Vista machine with my retail copy of Windows 7 and then upgrade that computer to Windows 10. OK, that's OK, but then, I reuse my retail copy of Windows 7 to upgrade another Vista machine, then upgrade that one to Windows 10. And so on until all four machines have been upgraded to Windows 10 with my one retail copy of Windows 7.

And no, I wouldn't be the only one to think this one up; I'd probably be accompanied by a few gazillion others. And if I and a few gazillion others can think of doing it this way, you can be sure that Microsoft has already thought about it and will have most likely figured out a way to block it.