Upgrade to Windows 10  

Brink said:

No. You have 1 year (until July 20th 2016) to claim your free upgrade. Once you do, it's good forever just like a retail copy. :)

Now that is written well! It gets rid of any misunderstanding, why couldn't Microsoft have written it like that. Instead they wrote it so:

, you must upgrade to Windows 10 within one year of availability. Once you upgrade, you have Windows 10 for free on that device.

and

It is available for a limited time: you have until July 29, 2016 to take advantage of this offer

When I look back at Page #10 Post #93 that reminds me of the initial problems I ran into with the first 10 upgrade to be solved with a look in the clean install guide there. This one lacks the warning seen in Step #2 there about the need to unplug any non OS drives as far as the 10240 RTM build is concerned not having run any of the other builds on a physical drive. Numerous errors, Restart to pass the new logo screen and then onto a blank screen where the upgrade stalls or a crash back to the desktop were the common items.

For anyone having problems trying to see an upgrade to 10 keep failing and you have additional internal or external hard drives for storage and back up purposes only the one or more will need to see either data cable unplugged while powered down preferably or the usb cord for external unplugged if no on/off switch is present to prevent boot files and temp installation folders from ending up in the wrong places! Been there done that here already!

As for the rest of the guide here everything is right on the mark as always! But for some reason the 10 installer doesn't want to play well with anything other then the intended OS drive while previously only the other OS drive might have to be unplugged simply to keep the boot loader there intact if later editing the 10 BCD Store for a dual boot.

DO NOT add or try adding a boot entry for 10 into the Windows 7 BCD! It won't work as a rule after repeat attempts while you can add one for 7 at any time in 10's! This is something to know for any of you planning to run 10 along side a previous version as far as a 10/7 dual boot goes.

Night Hawk said:

When I look back at Page #10 Post #93 that reminds me of the initial problems I ran into with the first 10 upgrade to be solved with a look in the clean install guide there. This one lacks the warning seen in Step #2 there about the need to unplug any non OS drives as far as the 10240 RTM build is concerned not having run any of the other builds on a physical drive.

That's in the tutorial.

Good to know! I thought as much but didn't notice just which part that was in. It's crucial however as I had already found out the hard way! I still remind people since they may tend to overlook the finer details a bit? at times and then end up where I was that first day or so! That's not a good place to be!

dstruct2k said:

I'm using the method in step 5 (Windows Update is totally broken on this machine), and it keeps asking me to enter my Windows 10 key. The installer will check for updates, then immediately ask for a key. Windows 7 Home Premium is installed and activated with the same key that's on the sticker.

If WU was working, I'd just let it eventually upgrade, but it's been 4 months since it successfully downloaded an update... (Many hours spent troubleshooting that already.)

Hello dstruct2k, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

If you would like to do a clean install of Windows 10 instead on your activated Windows 7 PC, then you could use the method in the tutorial below and have Windows 10 activated afterwards.

Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First

That should work out quite well for you! dstruct2k That other guide there was a much needed problem solver to get past upgrade headaches! With the present OEM 7 install you have there this is one option. You still may want to review the other guide for downloading 10 in case you end up wanting to upgrade another machine. Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Forums

If one opens the Genuineticket.xml file, you'll see various data including OA3 key (if run on Windows 8) also a tag called SessionID with encoded data.
Decoded SessionID has this information: (depending on which version gatherostate was run on)

Code:

OSMajorVersion=6
OSMinorVersion=1
OSPlatformId=2
PP=0
Hwid=XwAAABMANAAAAAEABAAAAAEAAgABAAAAAgABAAEAliuU2Q8WDFzZgua33+D8FOchtxtjqXcAM3/+YQwAAgABAQACBQADAQAEAgAGAQAIBwAJAwAKAQAMBwAAAAAAAAA=
Pfn=Microsoft.Windows.101.X19-98868_8wekyb3d8bbwe
DownlevelGenuineState=1

The hardwareID is encrypted.

This is what gets sent to the activation servers and then deleted from the system - the rest of the xml is stored within the licencing files (can be seen as the last XML entry on a WDT report)

dstruct2k said:

This'll work, thanks. Odd that a proper upgrade is impossible here, but thank you very much for the workaround. :)

I'm glad it could help. :)