Upgrade with current Product Key or Local Embedded Key

I will need to Upgrade my Windows 7 Pro to 10 soon!

I installed Windows 7 Pro on this Windows 8 Standard machine years ago. Will I be able to Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro? Or will I have to somehow reinsert the Windows 7 Pro Product Key to Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro? Or will I have to do a Clean Install and use the Windows 7 Pro Product Key? I also don't know if this machine ever had 10 on it. I think it was always a Windows 8 machine, but could be wrong, it's a used machine and had no OS on it when I got it.

I did not buy this key, I got it from an old dead Windows 7 Pro machine.

You should be able to upgrade the standard way. Run setup.exe from a Windows 10 installation USB flash drive (which you can download from Microsoft) or from a mounted ISO file for Windows 10 setup (which you can also download from Microsoft). Your Windows 7 Pro will upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and you will get a digital license for Windows 10 Pro established for that computer.

That's what I was hoping and thinking Navy, thanks for the confirmation.

I think this is the safest way to get my Pro license to come across, but what do you think will happen if I Clean Installed? Choose No Product Key, then Enter it once I get to the desktop, or is MS going to see this is a Windows 8 machine and try to force me into Windows 10 Home?

FunkMaster said:

That's what I was hoping and thinking Navy, thanks for the confirmation.

is MS going to see this is a Windows 8 machine and try to force me into Windows 10 Home?

Yes. It will read the Windows 8 product key from the computers firmware and install that version of Windows 10.

If I go the Upgrade Path to keep the Pro license like you suggested, what will happen later, down the road, if I need to Clean Install, will that Pro license now be locked in to MS Servers you think?

Hope that makes sense