W7 to W10 retail version product keys.

Davidt99 · 20 Apr 2021

Hi forum members. I'm hoping that someone here can shed some light on a problem I have identifying which W10 Pro upgrades I can reuse.

I used to have a number of Windows7 PC's with retail Pro licenses which have now been dismantled. I had taken advantage of the free Windows10 Pro upgrade a few years ago and had a thought to reuse the W7 product keys to give me a W10 Pro license on a PC (currently running WHS2011) but I can't remember which W7 product keys I upgraded! Is there anyway to find out which product keys are still valid/usable and which OS they are valid for.

Many thanks for any assistance.

Berton · 20 Apr 2021

Only way I've been able to do it was to install choosing I don't have a key then when prompted to Activate enter a key. If it was refused I tried a different key until I hit one that worked. Most of it involved using a Pro key to upgrade from Home to Pro.

Davidt99 · 20 Apr 2021

That was my thought to but I don't want to install Windows overighting the existing OS and then find i don't have a usable key.

SIW2 · 20 Apr 2021

Davidt99 said:

That was my thought to but I don't want to install Windows overighting the existing OS and then find i don't have a usable key.

Make an image of the existing os first, just in case.

Alternatively, detach the hd with the existing os. Put in a new hd and install win10 onto that.

Any problems and the original hd can be put back in.

NavyLCDR · 21 Apr 2021

One problem will be that the retail Windows 7 product keys have a limit as to the number of times they can be activated online over the internet within a certain period of time before Microsoft blocks them from online activation. Once the Windows 7 product key gets blocked from online activation, there is no way to use it to activate an install of Windows 10 directly. The user must first install Windows 7, activate that over the phone with the blocked Windows 7 product key, and then upgrade that Windows 7 to Windows 10 to get the digital license for Windows 10 established.

Davidt99 · 28 Apr 2021

I may have solved my problem. I still have the SSD's with the OS on them so I took a punt and plugged one into a PC as the boot drive and sure enough Windows boots up and activates automatically even though all hardware is different to the original activation. I think this is due to the OS being a retail version. What I have now is a PC that was on Windows10 Home now booting into Windows10 Pro, result.