On 15/01/2020 23:10, John Rumm wrote:
On 15/01/2020 21:58, Steve Walker wrote:
On 15/01/2020 19:30, JoeJoe wrote:
On 15/01/2020 18:16, Andy Burns wrote:
JoeJoe wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

I've updated a couple of dozen machines 7-10 in the last year,
most of them got a HD-SSD upgrade at the same time, so the
original disk was there as a backup in case of issues, but was
never needed. they were all allowed to upgrade for free, despite
the official free offer being long gone.

How do you do that?Â* I also want to upgrade Win7-10 as a clean
install on a new SSD.

Didn't do them as clean installs, cloned HD-SSD (reducing partition
size if required) removed HD and stuck on shelf, then perform a
win10 upgrade install in-place over win7, using ISO or USB stick
generated by the Microsoft media creation tool.Â* Later put the HD
back in and reformat as D: drive.

How does the "allowed to upgrade for free" work?

It's just down to Microsoft not really checking, so you get away
with it, these were all machines with "good" win7 pro licences to
start with.

Thanks, worth a shot as all my machines have legit Win 7 licences.

Is there a downside to an upgrade, rather than a clean install?

Once it has upgraded, it should licence itself (assuming that that
still works). From then on, you can wipe it and install from scratch
and as it has already recorded the machine as licenced on the MS
servers, it'll re-activate automatically.

I think you can get away with a clean install in the first place. Just
don't bother entering a win 10 key during installation, but then go back
to the activation page after, and select the option to enter a new
license and enter the Win 7 / 8 key then. (last time I tried it it
worked ok in a "blank" virtual machine)

You certainly could, but I'm not sure I'd trust that now, when the free
upgrade has supposedly ended. People are saying that an upgrade works
and I'd be reluctant to try a clean install route, as it may sort the
licencing in a different way.

SteveW