You Don’t Need a Product Key to Install and Use Windows 10
And despite confusion when this loophole was discovered long ago, Microsoft has not hidden or withdrawn the offer. They also have not specified when it will end. If you took advantage of the free upgrade offer, or you obtained Windows 10 using the methods in this article, you can reinstall Windows 10 on that same machine however many times you’d like without providing a product key.
This is because Windows 10 registers your hardware IDs with Microsoft’s servers, so that when you reinstall Windows, your hardware is automatically matched with the servers and activated. Windows 10 also allows you to upgrade various hardware components like RAM or storage devices without requiring reactivation. This is also thanks to the ID matching system. Was this article helpful? Yes No. Sorry this didn’t help. I let it follow the whole upgrade process as Microsoft designed it by reserving a copy of Windows 10 and waiting for it to prompt me that Windows 10 was ready to install.
AS part of this process, the checker tells me. It takes a long time on such a slow machine so I cant be sitting next to it for the whole process. If I am not around, I went o bed last night , I don’t even see this message.
This morning I just woke up to a Windows 7 Starter system again. When my old Windows 7 starter re-boots, the whole automatic background download starts again and then I get asked to commence the upgrade again. Having now had 3 downloads on this one machine, I am not going to bother starting the next upgrade until I can resolve what is preventing this upgrade from happening.
Windows Update History shows it failed with error code of C, which indicates some sort of incompatibility. Any ideas about how I can narrow it down. Was this comment helpful? I’m looking into this; some users are experiencing problems that are exceptionally difficult to diagnose because of all the variables associated with the issue.
Uninstall your antivirus, unplug any unnecessary peripherals, disconnect from the Internet entirely, and perform a clean boot. Then, while in the clean boot environment, try starting the upgrade from there. If you need instructions on how to perform a clean boot, see this support page. If you do happen to run into the same issue as TimWG, try following the same suggestion I gave him in my last reply and see if that works. You can give it a try and see what happens. Note that you must perform this from your current Windows 7.
What was the problem that occurred using Windows Update and the MCT and at what stage of the installation? This is the only version that installed properly: All other ways would hang on the second reboot. Choose where you want to search below Search Search the Community.
Search the community and support articles Windows Windows 10 Search Community member. Technical Level : Basic Summary Windows 10 was released with a free upgrade offer that lasted for 1 year. Details Use a Windows 7 or Windows 8. Assistive Technologies Offer Microsoft is offering Windows 10 for free for customers who use “assistive technologies”. Reinstall Windows 10 If you took advantage of the free upgrade offer, or you obtained Windows 10 using the methods in this article, you can reinstall Windows 10 on that same machine however many times you’d like without providing a product key.
Thanks for your feedback. How satisfied are you with this article? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site. Previous Next. Now on to my next machine, my daughter’s Lenovo S netbook, running Windows 7 Starter. After you get Windows 10 64 bit or 32 bit downloaded and installed on your PC, you can use the ways to below to keep your OS up-to-date. Windows will automatically detect newer updates for Windows If you find some newer updates available, you can select one to install on your PC.
After downloading, you can click the Windows update exe file and follow the instructions to install the latest update of Windows If you want to upgrade from bit to bit in Windows 10, you can check the related tutorials below.
Hope it helps. As a top software developing company, MiniTool Software provides Windows users some useful software. You can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to easily manage hard drive partitions by yourself.
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The free upgrade offer had just ended, and when I downloaded the Windows 10 upgrade tool and ran it on an old Windows 7 PC, I fully expected that the upgrade would fail activation and I’d be asked for a product key. Access to all personalization options; Microsoft support access; Equivalent to Windows 10 Enterprise; Free. Alas, I say “was,” because the extension which was itself extended officially ended on Jan. Before getting started, I recommend a few preliminary tasks that can head off potential problems:. If you have an old Windows key you can carry over from a previous build, that’s your best option and effectively gives you Windows 10 or Windows 11 for free. Feeds from The Document Foundation Planet.
Was this reply helpful? Yes No. Sorry this didn’t help. That is not free of charge, it is a trial version of an Edition of Windows that is not for the Home user, it is a volume licence of Windows You can download the ISO file free of charge, but that doesn’t give you a license to use it. So you can’t activate it unless you pay for it.
Choose where you want to search below Search Search the Community. Search the community and support articles Windows Windows 10 Search Community member. This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. I have the same question Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. Kapil Arya [Directly]. Hope this helps! Thanks for your feedback. How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
Andre for Directly Independent Advisor. Hi reshawn Windows 10 is not free if you are running Windows 8 or earlier or your computer doesn’t have a license installed at all. If all you need to the installation files for Windows 10, here is how you get them: What you should do, is first download the ISO file using Media Creation Tool, then use another tool such as Rufus to make a bootable copy.
Image Click in the Edition list box, choose your edition then click Next. Windows 10 – contains Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. Windows 10 N – only select this edition if you reside in Europe, it does not contain Windows Media Player. In order to use an ISO you must burn it to a optical disc. If you are using Windows 7, you can create the. ISO then burn it using the built in Disc Image utility. Creating a. ISO file For the purposes of this exercise, we are gonna use the.
ISO option. Wait while the. ISO image is created. Click in the list box then choose your partition scheme. If you select the ISO, Rufus will automatically select the appropriate options for you.
Next, click in the File system list box, then choose FAT Leave the default Cluster size then enter a label for your thumb drive. Click the choose disk image icon, browse to where the ISO file is located, select it then click Open.
Click Start to copy the files to the thumb drive. If you have any files on the thumb drive, they will be deleted. Wait while the files are copied to your thumb drive. Close when complete.
Hello, although Windows 10 is not free, you can use most of the basic features for free on trial mode. When you see the option to enter the Licence key, you can click on skip for now. Hope this helps, and let me know if you have further questions! DaveM Independent Advisor. In reply to A. User’s post on January 8, Ken Blake. This site in other languages x.