Keep Win 7 until no longer supported then install free Windows 10?  

Initially for the 10240 upgrade on an HP laptop I had downloaded and saved the ISOs for both Home and Pro editions where besides the main and secondary desktops running 7 Ultimate and Pro editions went for the laptop which resulted in seeing the buggy upgrade replaced immediately with a clean install for the 32bit 10 at first to be followed by a second 64bit.

While there wasn't anything wrong with the first 64bit install the OEM couldn't be shrunk down any to see a second small backup partition forcing a fully wiped and repartitioned drive to take on the second 64bit flawless clean install. That was all before the guide for how to see a clean install without need to upgrade first was posted.

Unfortunately the display let go on the older laptop while it still powers up normally as far as the post tests go it would seem but will now need to find if some how it got switched to external monitor mode while none was present or the graphics chip simply decided to take a permanent vacation?!

That was last December for the laptop bought in May 2012 replaced a month later by a Toshiba that came with 10 already on. While another similar to second case mini tower only with another rather outdated board just saw 10 upgrade over 7 Home x64 with ease and good results by way of mounting the ISO image file downloaded not by MCT however but right from the 10 page MS had since come out with for direct online upgrade or download to save and even make media with other tool.

Virtual Clonedrive a freeware app for mounting image files worked quite well at seeing 10 upgrade over the original 7 install once mounted and manually starting up the setup.exe file. That may be a better option besides simply going clean install for the laptops that do run into upgrade problems due to OEM type security issues as the main proprietary reason for this. On one VM upgrade from 7 to 10 a rather interesting test was seen by way of duplicating the BT folder by transfer to VM in order to get inside that and manually start the setup file which is now still an active ongoing Insider build VM. When getting stuck by one method trying an alternate often will see results.

Once you click the skip option the activation servers should detect the existing GenuineTicket for the previous version's own activation and apply the now called Digital License previously Digital Entitlement. Here I would find if not on the same day the next day or later would then automatically find 10 activated either on physical machine or even on a couple of VM upgrade tests.

NovHak said:

It was not possible before version 1511 was released, which was somewhere in november I think. That's why it didn't work for you. But now that you did it, you have a W10 digital license activated, which means your W10 will automatically detect depending on your hardware that it's licensed to run Windows and activate it without asking for a product key.

Weird.
This was April 2016 using a W10 Home ISO downloaded that same day.

Now that it has successfully installed, a clean install will not ask for a Product Key?
It will automatically check online?

NavyLCDR said:

Not quite correct. If the computer does not have a product key stored in Bios/UEFI firmware Windows setup will ask for a product key and the user has to click the option to skip it or "I don't have a product key".

I couldn't proceed past the Product Key screen (no options available/enabled).