Licensing Error How to Port Older Windows Licenses to 10

dave123 said:

I own two retail copies of the windows pro operating system but for years I have only been able to use one of the licenses and I have never figured out what the problem is. I purchased windows 8 from a big box store very soon after it was released but the update to 8.1 never ported and I eventually just purchased another copy of windows. Recently I tried to install the first retail license and it states that the license is now only good for updating my copy of windows. It was a retail copy of the operating system with key card and two disks, one for 64 bit machines and one for 32 bit machines. The license is telling me that it can only be used to update my existing installation of windows but it installs the whole operating system from one disk as was intended.

Anyway, I'm just wondering if it is possible to actually use the license to upgrade like the error suggests? How could I port this to a windows ten upgrade license because at the moment this license thinks it is only for upgrading an OEM system.

You can install 8 and upgrade to 8.1 and 10.

If you have an Windows 10 PC, (even unactivated) you can use ShowKeyPlus (search on Google or on the MS store) to see what is the key for. Screenshot it (censor the key) and send it here.

There were Upgrades to Win8 from Win7 and maybe Vista [but I never tried with Vista]. I also didn't try a clean install of Win8 Upgrade version, several Upgrade versions of Windows allowed only inserting the disc when prompted to prove the previous version existed, didn't need an actual install. As for getting to Win10, the last I did from Win8 did require going to Win8.1 before it allowed the free Upgrade to Win10. The main thing with Upgrades is using the same type edition, 32-bit to 32-bit or 64-bit to 64-bit, if wanting to change one to the other required a clean install. And the Product Key found by Win10 install determines the edition, manually entering the key also has to be for the correct edition, 32-bit and 64-bit don't interchange.

NavyLCDR said:

Just curious, have you tried a clean install of Windows 10 first? Skip entering the product key, then once Windows 10 is installed, change the product key to the Windows 8 product key.

Yes. Only issue I ran into was using a Win8 Ultimate key, wanted to activate as Win10 Enterprise instead of Pro but couldn't find a Server to verify it. So I reinstalled then use a Win8 Pro key that worked fine. The Win8 Ultimate is working fine now on an older Dell Latitude E6410 Notebook and updated to 8.1. To add, both keys came from Microsoft in a program that has been discontinued.

NavyLCDR said:

It was actually a suggestion for @dave123 to try :)

That's okay, it wasn't addressed so thought it was a response to my post.