Recover Windows 10 license key from original free upgrade

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I have a laptop which originally came with Win 7 that I upgraded with the Free upgrade to Windows 10 about the second week that it was available.  Due to a long series of circumstances which I won’t go into, I ended up having to do a factory restore which left the machine running Windows 7 again.

Is there a fairly uncomplicated way to get my free win 10 license back on the machine?  (no backup is available, and I didn’t have the foresight to copy the license down before all the nonsense began…)

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When you did the upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and it was activated, Microsoft connected the computer with a digital license on their servers. If you have not made major hardware changes, you should be able to install Win10 on the computer and have it activate automatically.

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PKCano wrote:

When you did the upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and it was activated, Microsoft connected the computer with a digital license on their servers. If you have not made major hardware changes, you should be able to install Win10 on the computer and have it activate automatically.

I can confirm this. You can actually do a clean install of WIN10 and when prompted to enter the license, just say you don’t have one. It will automatically activate.

 

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Microfix

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I’m following this thread with interest. Last October, shortly after Microsoft shut down the free upgrades from Windows 7 to Windows 10, I replaced a failing HDD in a Windows 7 PC with a new one and restored a known good Macrium Reflect image from the old HDD. All appeared to be going well with the new HDD until about 30 days later when the ‘not genuine Windows’ window popped up with the links to activate. All efforts to activate  failed including the links provided which redirected to activate Windows 10 or Windows 11. Phone calls to Microsoft also redirected to activate Windows 10 or Windows 11 with no option to speak to anyone.

Already long story short, while I was researching all of that above I read that it appears that in their zeal to shut down the free upgrades from Windows 7 to Windows 10, when they shut down the Windows 7 activation servers they also inadvertently shut down at least some servers that had been used to activate free upgrades from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Apparently enough people on those upgraded Windows 10 PCs were affected by no longer being activated and unable to reactivate that Microsoft released a statement saying they were aware of the situation and ‘looking into it’. I’ve never been able to find any update or additional information on that. Not surprising I guess since they want everyone on Windows 11 now.

So I’m curious to see how this situation (@cavourite’s) goes.

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opti1 wrote:

I replaced a failing HDD in a Windows 7 PC with a new one and restored a known good Macrium Reflect image from the old HDD.

If I understand you correctly, you recovered a WIN7 image from Macrium? If so, that was probably the problem. Once you upgrade to WIN10, your machine is registered with a digital license for WIN10. You can clean install or restore WIN10 images and it will activate automatically. AAMOF, you could probably STILL fresh install WIN10 if it was previously activated with a digital license. If you have a WIN10 Macrium image, it should activate.

I have actually upgraded from WIN7 to WIN10 on three machines that were previously HP OEM installs. At this time, all three of them are clean installs of WIN10. I have even replaced the motherboard and CPU on them, fully prepared to have to get a new license, but they are all still activated. It could be something with the HP OEM, so I’m not saying this will always be the case. Just sharing my experience.

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Confusing, I know. I could have been more clear. Actually I was not upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and there never was Windows 10 on the old HDD. I was just swapping out the old Windows 7 HDD and restoring a Windows 7 image from that old HDD to the new HDD. The PC was soon to be retired because of age (13 years!) and I wanted to keep it going a bit longer. No Windows 10 was involved here other than the activation process keeping on redirecting me there. 🙂

Moderator note: fixed that for you

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Thanks Moderator!

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If you get the right support person on chat or the phone, they should be able to give you codes that will override and activate your Windows 7.  With phone support the trick often is to break out of the standard paths – mash the zero button repeatedly for an operator, say something vague like error, problem, or help instead of activation.

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opti1 wrote:

Actually I was not upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and there never was Windows 10 on the old HDD. I was just swapping out the old Windows 7 HDD and restoring a Windows 7 image from that old HDD to the new HDD.

Oh, OK, that makes sense. Well, actually, that doesn’t make sense (as far as MSFT is concerned ) that they shut down the WIN7 activation server.  😒

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