Clean Win 10 Install on Win 7 PC Activated, with No Previous Upgrade


  1. Posts : 360
    Windows 10 Pro x64
       #1

    Clean Win 10 Install on Win 7 PC Activated, with No Previous Upgrade


    My brother has an older Dell Latitude E6400 laptop that came with Windows 7 Pro. It had not been upgraded to Windows 10.

    He bought a new SSD drive for the laptop. I thought I would try an experiment and see if a clean install of Windows 10 on the new SSD drive would activate with the Windows 7 Pro product key that is printed on a sticker under the laptop battery.

    I removed the old spinning hard drive and installed the new bare SSD drive, making sure the bios is set to ACHI. The laptop is older and does not support UEFI, so it will have an MBR partitioning scheme.

    I created a bootable Windows 10 x64 USB flash drive using Rufus from a downloaded ISO (version 1511).

    The ISO I used asks if you want to install Home or Pro, I chose PRO. When the Windows 10 installer asked for a product key, I checked the "I don't have a product key" option. I decided to enter the Windows 7 Pro product key after Windows 10 was installed. The install proceeded normally to completion, asking for a Microsoft Account, which I provided.

    After Windows 10 was installed, I opened the Settings, Updates & Security, Activation settings. It stated the PC was not activated because it had no digital entitlement. I selected "change product key" and entered the Windows 7 Pro product key printed on a label under the laptops battery. Windows 10 Pro activated right away.

    So, now that Windows 7 product keys are accepted for Windows 10 activation, it appears you do not have to preform an upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 first. Saves a lot of trouble and time.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 5,452
    windows 10 Pro ver 21H2 build 19044.1348
       #2

    This has been known to most Windows users for quite a while.

    Here is one article published on October 15th, 2015 pertaining to the same topic.
    https://www.thurrott.com/windows/win...ey-to-activate
      My Computer


 

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