You can upgrade, but not activate based on old keys. This has been discussed extensively around the time this happens.
Further, if you attempt to transfer digital activation rights acquired that way to new hardware, you now risk losing it.
It will always possible to upgrade Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10. What is no longer possible is for the upgrade to get a free digital licence to activate the Windows 10.
There have been some who report having issues with reactivating windows after a hardware change. This has been an issue since MS withdrew the free upgrade for W7/W8. However, yesterday I successfully transferred a digital licence to another machine, a digital licence that had originally been obtained by a free upgrade from Windows 7.
Lost Activation win11 pro | Page 5 | Windows 11 Forum - posts #92 & #93.
So, it MAY still be possible ? I don't wish to go on about it, but this is what I intended doing......purchase an old Dell Inspiron 1545, running W 7 Home......then clean install W 10 Home, from a USB flash drive, presumably the copy of W10 on the flash drive, has it's own digital key, or is it more complicated than that ?.......obviously fraught with problems, but will it actually activate ?........a yes, or no please, then I will shut up !!......
Last edited by Del 80; 14 Jan 2024 at 04:54.
My main machine will only be activated with the installation I did in November.
Clean install of win11 does not activate. Just tried it again yesterday.
It was a free win7>win10>win11 activation.
Thanks for that......I think I've finally grasped it !!......I think my next laptop will be either a W 10 one, capable of upgrading to W 11, or a W 11 one itself.....one last thing, occaisionally I re-install W 10 on these laptops, if they are not running too well, obviously this still works, as I did one this week......presumably this will still continue to activate, as it's not an actual upgrade ?.......
You can reinstall as many times as you need to.
Better to use 3rd party disk imaging regularly and routinely- if you have a disk image which was created before the problem occurred, you can restore the imaged partitions (in particular the whole O/S) to as they were when the image was created, hopefully avoiding a clean install.
(I've not done one for over 6 years).
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