Your license type should carry over, I.E if you had Win 7 retail you now have Win 10 retail and can transfer it to new hardware, as long as it isn't installed twice.
I finally converted my Windows 7 to 10 two weeks ago. My last hang up is the fact that my retail box full license Windows 7 is now converted to a license that is tied in to my current hardware (so it's like a pseudo OEM). Now I can't simply just swap this license to a new computer that I build with completely different components. But then I thought I probably won't do that in the next couple of years anyway, so I just went through with the free upgrade.
ok, I think you guys have convinced me to upgrade. I'm scared.
ok, I think you guys have convinced me to upgrade. I'm scared.
Just backup or run file history/restore point before and do it - you're going to need to upgrade to 10 eventually. I heard it will be a long time before another version of Windows is released.
Your license type should carry over, I.E if you had Win 7 retail you now have Win 10 retail and can transfer it to new hardware, as long as it isn't installed twice.
In short, the "free" Win10 upgrade offer is "for the lifetime of the device", you are upgrading, and only that one single device.
On the other hand, if you change your hardware after 07/29/2016, you can still reinstall your prior retail Windows license, but you would no longer qualify to upgrade your new machine to Win10 for free as the free upgrade offer would have expired. "
If you upgraded an OEM device to Windows 10 for free then you can still reinstall Windows 10 on it for the lifetime of the device since that license can not be legally transferred to other hardware anyway. If you upgraded a retail version of Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10 then after 29 July 2016 you will be unable to fully move that Windows 10 upgrade to a new device using the Windows 7 or 8.1 retail license.
Just backup or run file history/restore point before and do it - you're going to need to upgrade to 10 eventually. I heard it will be a long time before another version of Windows is released.
A restore point isn't necessary if you go through the upgrade process since Win10 will save the old windows dir and allow the user to switch back to Win7/8 within 30 days.
A restore point isn't necessary if you go through the upgrade process since Win10 will save the old windows dir and allow the user to switch back to Win7/8 within 30 days.
This is not what I've been told. I was in another forum back in August when someone actually went to Microsoft support and documented his whole experience asking three different Microsoft tech support person about the status of his Windows retail license after taking the free upgrade to Windows 10. In short, in the end he confirmed that the upgraded license is basically converted to a 'pseudo OEM' license tied to his current hardware. There is no way to extract the serial number from that installation, so in case he wants to install Windows 10 on a new build completely separate from the current machine (assuming, of course, that he won't be using the old machine anymore), there is no way to do so. Just like an OEM license.
Now, granted I haven't personally look into this and just believe what this person said, and there is a possibility that the policy has changed since August, so if you or someone else here knows otherwise, I'm glad to hear it.
Edit: Here's the key sentence from the report "You will get a product key during the in-place upgrade, but you will lose transfer rights during the process. You will then only be able to install on this machine from here on out "
Edit 2: Here's a somewhat related discussion in our own OS forum, just a few days ago
From Winsupersite <-- this article is really good and includes a lot of related information, including the comment section.
How long will it be before Windows 7 and 8 users are no longer capable playing new game titles?
Will games soon have DirectX 12 requirements that force everyone to Win10?
Its only recently that XP won't support games, I'd guess a long time since windows 7,8 and 10 are built on the same model. I'd guess the hardware will become too old to run anything after 8 years or so.
No game company is going to limit itself to DX12 gamers only. You need windows 10 and a video card that supports DX12.
This is not what I've been told. I was in another forum back in August when someone actually went to Microsoft support and documented his whole experience asking three different Microsoft tech support person about the status of his Windows retail license after taking the free upgrade to Windows 10. In short, in the end he confirmed that the upgraded license is basically converted to a 'pseudo OEM' license tied to his current hardware. There is no way to extract the serial number from that installation, so in case he wants to install Windows 10 on a new build completely separate from the current machine (assuming, of course, that he won't be using the old machine anymore), there is no way to do so. Just like an OEM license.
Now, granted I haven't personally look into this and just believe what this person said, and there is a possibility that the policy has changed since August, so if you or someone else here knows otherwise, I'm glad to hear it.
Edit: Here's the key sentence from the report "You will get a product key during the in-place upgrade, but you will lose transfer rights during the process. You will then only be able to install on this machine from here on out "
Edit 2: Here's a somewhat related discussion in our own OS forum, just a few days ago
From Winsupersite <-- this article is really good and includes a lot of related information, including the comment section.
May be a silly question, but if I just upgraded a part, say a GPU, will that also impact the Win10 license? If not, at what point does the license become invalidated? New motherboard? New CPU?