That one jumped out at me too.
The fact that it says "reactivate... on your device" might mean that
- there's only so many times you can make a hardware change and re-activate or
- on the same hardware you can only clean-install so many times, even with no hardware changes
I'm hoping it isn't (b).
Superfly, I've just been referred to your extremely useful tool. I'm trying to work out if a machine has been previously upgraded to Windows 10 (via Microsoft's free promotion), but has since been restored to its original OS (7/8/8.1). In other words, can I see if a machine has a digital licence for Windows 10 despite it running the original OS? I'm asking because I have bought a job lot of used laptops that have been restored to factory settings and running 7/8/8.1. It would be very useful to see if the previous owner had upgraded to 10 so that I can then upgrade the machines back to 10 myself without buying a product key. If I do risk installing Windows 10 (and the activation server cannot find a digital licence in the BIOS), then I no longer have an activated OS!
Are there any tell tale signs or something to look for in your tool for my case?
Thanks
Hiyya Kyhi now I thought that one could do that if the upgrade had been tried on a machine - am not doubting you but it used to work on the machines I tried the free upgrade on.
Now my other query is that the laptop I am on right now has a drive with 7 (current OS) and also a drive with an OEM 10 Pro on it and what I would like to know is will Showkey show both OS codes if I could run it because right now Showkey downloads and I have tried extracting it to my programs and also just running it but it will not run.
Edit: I should have added that as soon as I get out of hospital and back home I am going to dual boot this machine 7&10 so not being able to run Showkey is of a concern..
What I see in the last several posts is a misunderstanding about the Registry. ShowKey Plus will read what is in the Registry of the current installation and is booted into. Doing a Factory Restore to a previous version of Windows installs a new Registry, shouldn't contain anything left over from the last install. Same for a Clean install, completely new Registry. If Win10 is an Upgrade install [rather than a clean install] it is quite possible for an older Product Key to show. I've installed Win10 on an old computer that ShowKey got the Vista key so I'd presume there's some computer BIOSes that contain information but it could also be hit-or-miss. I don't really consider that a standard until Win8 came about.
Showkey will pull the OEM marker from the Bios and from any installed online or offline OS..
In the case at point - they reset to factory OS - thus no windows 10 upgrade information available for showkey to read..
now in my last post I did mention the Showkey was not working on this machine I am on - currently running 7 and I am wondering why because a while ago Superfly posted an answer for the same question form me and said that running it in 7 needed a few bugs to be ironed out.
Now I think he did that and it worked but now it is again not working - any reasons??
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