In-place upgrade - XP to 10 without losing the apps

Koala007 said:

as far as I understand it is quite easy to upgrade a WinXP PC to Win10. What about the license key? Do I need a new license key for Win10? Or is there a possibility to use the old key from WinXP?

Welcome to Ten Forums.

You will need a new key at some point. When I did my 32-bit XP to 32-bit W10 upgrade the first step, XP to Vista, didn't ask for a key. I then upgraded Vista to Win7 without a key. It was the Windows 10 upgrade that wouldn't allow me to proceed until I had first activated the Windows 7, so that's when I needed to use a W7 key. The Windows 10 then got activated with a digital licence based on the Win7 having been activated.

spapakons said:

You will need at least a Windows 7 or 8 or 10 license to activate 10.

I am sure many folks here will disagree with me, but I believe as long as you activate 10 with a valid genuine Windows 7 or 8 or 10 license, you are legit, even if the earlier Windows versions were not activated with a valid license. Behave please, I already said you wouldn't approve that.

This is not really true. Windows 10 upgrades check the installed key and if it detects an illegal key, it will fail to activate. However, some get lucky and it works. It realy depends on how it was activated e.g. an illegally activated kms key may fail, but a dodgy oem key (one use multiple times) may work. There is no obvious pattern, but you cannot assume all ilegally activated w7 licences will update and be activated.

spapakons said:

We know that 64-bit computers work better with Windows 10 64-bit, but this thread is about already running Windows XP 32-bit and want to UPGRADE to 10 (not new installation). You can only upgrade from XP to Vista 32-bit to 7 32-bit and finally to 10 32-bit. As for the Windows keys, you can upgrade to the next version without entering a key, provided you select the appropriate type (Home or Pro). But you might need a key to activate before Setup allows you to upgrade again to the next version. I would not buy a Vista license just to activate Vista, I would activate it with some not so legit tools. I would use a genuine license only to Activate 7 and 10. I believe since I have a genuine valid license for the final version, I am 100% legal. A legal check would demand to see a valid license for Windows 10. How you got there they don't mind and they don't have the expertise to find out.

Whilst interesting as an intellectual exercise, how many (sane) people would actually go through this to upgrade from XP to W10?

Many of the apps on XP would be incompatible anyway.

Not only that most XP era pcs would give up the ghost on W10.

cereberus said:

Whilst interesting as an intellectual exercise, how many (sane) people would actually go through this to upgrade from XP to W10?
Many of the apps on XP would be incompatible anyway.
Not only that most XP era pcs would give up the ghost on W10.

Actually my XP laptop gave up the ghost years before W10 was released, years before W8 come to that. Which was a shame as it had a licensed copy of Microsoft Office 2003 installed with no record of the installed key. In fact the only remaining working part was the (IDE) hard drive.

Yes, it was an interesting exercise, all done in a VM. But the aim was to get a working W10 with MS Office that I could then use on my little netbook. With it's maximum of 2GB RAM a 32-bit OS was ideal.