New
#1
Transferring a Win 10 to a new PC, with a free upgrade license
This may already have been answered, but I haven't seen it answered in a way that I thought captured the significant details.
Scenario: I have a PC with a retail copy of Win 8.1 Pro installed and activated. I get the free Win 10 Pro upgrade by download. I create an .iso from the .esd file.
Because Win 8.1 is a retail license, I could legitimately transfer it to a new PC, as long as I removed it from the old PC.
I presume that I could use that to qualify the new PC for the free Win 10 upgrade, as long as I did it before the free upgrade offer expires in 2016.
If I wished to transfer the Win10 installation to a new PC after that time:
Would Microsoft regard it as legitimate? (Does the free upgrade preserve the "retailness" of the qualifying license?)
How would it work?
(The Windows 8 upgrade provided a key. The upgrade license was transferable. It also cost $40US. MS limited the time during which they'd sell you the key, but the key was good indefinitely.)
At a guess, the free upgrade will not be transferable after the free upgrade offer expires.
Another question, mostly unrelated:
Suppose that I've done the upgrade on a PC. Its hard drive dies. I wish to use the .iso I created above to do a fresh install on a new hard drive in the original PC, which will be unchanged otherwise. Is there a way to do that without re-installing and activating the qualifying OS? (Some people have seemed to suggest that when Win10 is installed on a blank HD, the PC will send a hardware hash to MS's activation server. The server will recognize the PC, and activate the new install. That sounds possible, but it's not exactly like the activation procedure for older versions of Windows. They wanted a key.)
I'd like to know of official and unofficial ways to re-install the Win 10 free upgrade on a blank HD.
For comparison: if I wish to install Win 8.1 on a blank HD using an upgrade license, I'm supposed to run it as an upgrade over an installed and activated qualifying OS. There is a simple (hack free) work-around that makes it unnecessary to have the older OS installed. I wonder whether something similar will be available for 10.