Can I upgrade without problems after downgrade to 8.1 and HW change?

zbook said:

Windows upgrades are still free for licensed windows 7, 8, and 8.1.

That'd be great.

dalchina said:

...but the PC was previously upgraded to '10...

But if I can upgrade anyway, it doesn't really matter.

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slicendice said:

If you have a valid 8.1 license and your computer is still activated with current hardware setup, you can safely upgrade to Windows 10. The license will be transferred automatically.

Just to be on the safe side, do an upgrade once and make sure your activation status is valid and linked to your MS account. After that you can safely clean install Windows 10 later and the system will activate automatically, even without entering any keys during setup. Just make sure you install the correct Edition (eg. Home, Pro, Enterprise) though.

You can also extract all your valid keys from your Windows 8.1 installation and use them to activate Windows 10 later.
I do this kind of stuff daily at work, because we get a lot of old computers with valid Win7 or Win8 installations and we upgrade (secure wipe the disk and clean install) them all to latest Windows 10. Works for Windows 7, 8.0, 8.1 --> 10 and for both retail and OEM, and Home/Pro. does not matter.

Great. One problem less.

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AddRAM said:

What type of issues did you have ? And with what version ?

1909 is solid as a Rock

1903 was/is too.

You mean me? Several... I might even have a list somewhere. It was like 2-3 years ago.
If I recall correctly the main things was audio crackling, high IRQ, frame drops. But W10 also froze solid when I ran out of memory, meanwhile on 8 only the memory hog app was killed off...

Probably most, if not all of my comments on this forum are about these.

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dalchina said:

Agreed with 1903. Er... 1803 perhaps?

Can I choose what w10 version to upgrade to? Or at least some ultra stable branch?

dalchina said:

-perhaps you've missed the point about whether your new hardware would be activated.

I stated that for a different purpose in its context.

Well, people said. "If you have a valid 8.1 license and your computer is still activated with current hardware setup, you can safely upgrade to Windows 10. The license will be transferred automatically." and "Windows upgrades are still free for licensed windows 7, 8, and 8.1.".

That suggested to me that I would get a functioning win 10 after an upgrade, not some unactivated gunk.

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dalchina said:

Thank you for your reply.

All builds of Win 10 are freely downloadable. You then have to take control of updates one way or another to avoid upgrading. From 1909 that's built in- for a period.

Where? I only used some updater back then that downloaded whatever version on the fly.

dalchina said:

Thank you for your reply.


- expect to have difficulty resolving that.

Probably won't be a problem. I think that was before the HW change, now I use the integrated sound adapter on the new mobo. (Everything else also changed to newer HW)

AddRAM said:

I would go with 1909, and then change defer Feature update to 365 days. Then you can choose to update to 2004 when you want to

Anything good in that version? You also mentioned 1903. (dalchina only thinks 1803 is stable)

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dalchina said:

The rules and guidance about OEM licences and changing hardware have been referred to above. The rules apply to all.

If you have a retail license, you should be ok.

dalchina said:

Try
Determine if Windows License Type is OEM, Retail, or Volume

So, it says Professional edition, RETAIL channel and licensed. So that should be fine, right?

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AddRAM said:

What type of issues did you have ?

So, I did make note of some annoying stuff. (But the most troubling ones were those that I already mentioned) Like lack of home group, video frame freezing in the mediaplayer after I left the system idle for a while (and the monitor/gpu was switched off). Loudness equalization (whatever that is, I forgot what the actual issue was.)
I also have the snipping tool and the calculator noted. (Also forgot why)