Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10
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Anyway, I'm not going down the OEM route. Firstly, I don't believe it's in the spirit of the licence. And secondly, I get enough hassle during a Microsoft audit as it is without adding any potential complications.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
Anyway, I'm not going down the OEM route. Firstly, I don't believe it's in the spirit of the licence. And secondly, I get enough hassle during a Microsoft audit as it is without adding any potential complications.
It's totally industry standard. I would not question this at all. Even MS doesn't talk about this when you talk to their licensing people. It's just applied to the motherboard, nothing more to it. There is zero hassle in an audit, you just apply the sticker to the case. It's actually the least hassle method.
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It comes with a sticker? During our last audit we had to send copies of HP PC invoices to Microsoft, as I don't think Windows 10 includes a licence key / sticker any more?
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
It comes with a sticker? During our last audit we had to send copies of HP PC invoices to Microsoft, as I don't think Windows 10 includes a licence key / sticker any more?
I believe OEM for windows 10 does.... I may be wrong....
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I think I'll go with Open Licence which is a fair bit cheaper than retail, at least. Dearer than OEM but Open licences are by far the easiest to manage during an audit.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
I think I'll go with Open Licence which is a fair bit cheaper than retail, at least. Dearer than OEM but Open licences are by far the easiest to manage during an audit.
They shouldn't be because they are double licenses. You have to track both the underlying OEM as well as the VL upgrade license. So it's a double license tracking. One that is tied to hardware, one that is not.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
It comes with a sticker? During our last audit we had to send copies of HP PC invoices to Microsoft, as I don't think Windows 10 includes a licence key / sticker any more?
Pretty sure that they have to for OEM.
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Have you tried installing Windows 10 on one of your computers and entering the Windows 7 product key from the sticker and see if it activates?
It's my understanding that that still works (unless they killed it in the last few days). As long as MS servers are still creating activations I don't see a legal issue with that.
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I haven't. That would be awesome.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
I haven't. That would be awesome.
Here's my personal suggestion.
Get an SSD, grab one of those machines - remove the old drive, plug in the SSD, install Windows 10. try to activate it. If it works, Great!
Now format that SSD, remove it, put the old drive back in and wait for whatever software updates you need.
Now take that SSD to the second machine and repeat above process, rinse and repeat across all machines. Now that you have rights to use Windows 10 on all machines, get a VL for ONE Windows 10 Pro license and use the VL media to make an image that you use to deploy windows 10 on those machines.
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@Dashrender said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
Have you tried installing Windows 10 on one of your computers and entering the Windows 7 product key from the sticker and see if it activates?
It's my understanding that that still works (unless they killed it in the last few days). As long as MS servers are still creating activations I don't see a legal issue with that.
Definitely is MS accepts it, it's legal.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
I haven't. That would be awesome.
Worth a shot.
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@Dashrender said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
I haven't. That would be awesome.
Here's my personal suggestion.
Get an SSD, grab one of those machines - remove the old drive, plug in the SSD, install Windows 10. try to activate it. If it works, Great!
Now format that SSD, remove it, put the old drive back in and wait for whatever software updates you need.
Now take that SSD to the second machine and repeat above process, rinse and repeat across all machines. Now that you have rights to use Windows 10 on all machines, get a VL for ONE Windows 10 Pro license and use the VL media to make an image that you use to deploy windows 10 on those machines.
I did this with VirtualBox ahead of the 29th to make sure that legally we had upgraded every key. If MS complained later, I'd have documentation that I had done it. There was debate as to whether it would correctly record the key, but I figured it would still work because we had done the correct process and upgraded the right key, if they recorded it incorrectly we'd just have to call and explain like you normally need to do anyway.
Ended up getting to 100% Windows 10 ahead of the date anyway, so it didn't come up. But there was a process that I'm 90% sure worked to take care of the upgrade for those machines that could not do it right away for other reasons.
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@DustinB3403 said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
Now if that business initiative is from the IT department, shame on you. If it's from upper management saying "No, don't do an upgrade yet" then shame on them.
I'm not going there. I will say though that I did a tour of the Red Bull Formula 1 factory a few months ago. They're obviously on the bleeding edge of modern engineering, but I noted that even they had a few workstations still running XP. -
@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
@DustinB3403 said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
Now if that business initiative is from the IT department, shame on you. If it's from upper management saying "No, don't do an upgrade yet" then shame on them.
I'm not going there. I will say though that I did a tour of the Red Bull Formula 1 factory a few months ago. They're obviously on the bleeding edge of modern engineering, but I noted that even they had a few workstations still running XP.You know, I'm not surprised. This happens all over the place. The computer "works good enough" and it's not something that the mechanics care about so they don't worry about getting the latest and greatest.. but hot damn.. if Snap On comes out with a new wrench, you can better well believe they will be getting that new tool because it's what they know, it's what they like and personally care about.
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@Dashrender said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
I haven't. That would be awesome.
Here's my personal suggestion.
Get an SSD, grab one of those machines - remove the old drive, plug in the SSD, install Windows 10. try to activate it. If it works, Great!
Now format that SSD, remove it, put the old drive back in and wait for whatever software updates you need.
Now take that SSD to the second machine and repeat above process, rinse and repeat across all machines. Now that you have rights to use Windows 10 on all machines, get a VL for ONE Windows 10 Pro license and use the VL media to make an image that you use to deploy windows 10 on those machines.
This worked. Yay. How come this isn't more widely known?
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
@Dashrender said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
I haven't. That would be awesome.
Here's my personal suggestion.
Get an SSD, grab one of those machines - remove the old drive, plug in the SSD, install Windows 10. try to activate it. If it works, Great!
Now format that SSD, remove it, put the old drive back in and wait for whatever software updates you need.
Now take that SSD to the second machine and repeat above process, rinse and repeat across all machines. Now that you have rights to use Windows 10 on all machines, get a VL for ONE Windows 10 Pro license and use the VL media to make an image that you use to deploy windows 10 on those machines.
This worked. Yay. How come this isn't more widely known?
I'm not sure what you mean? Microsoft I don't think would ever say this publicly because it doesn't serve their actual goal - which is moving everyone to Windows 10 now.
As for the actual process - why isn't it more widely known? I'm not sure I'd say that it isn't.
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I don't read a lot of press admittedly, but this is the only place where I've read that you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free. I've read a few places talking about a workaround by claiming to need assistive technologies, but nowhere that says you don't need any workaround, you can just upgrade as normal. For free.
Even on this thread, loads of people posted, but you're the only one who posted that you could still upgrade for free.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
I don't read a lot of press admittedly, but this is the only place where I've read that you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free. I've read a few places talking about a workaround by claiming to need assistive technologies, but nowhere that says you don't need any workaround, you can just upgrade as normal. For free.
Even on this thread, loads of people posted, but you're the only one who posted that you could still upgrade for free.
That's because it's not suppose to be a general thing. Paul Thurrott has written this in a few of his articles, but really it's only because MS hasn't turned this off on their servers yet that it still works. I say - Consider yourself lucky. With almost any other company, they would have shut down the free offer the moment they said they were going to. For whatever reason, MS hasn't.
FYI, this could stop working today, tomorrow, who knows when. You shouldn't rely on it.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Paying to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10:
I don't read a lot of press admittedly, but this is the only place where I've read that you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free. I've read a few places talking about a workaround by claiming to need assistive technologies, but nowhere that says you don't need any workaround, you can just upgrade as normal. For free.
Even on this thread, loads of people posted, but you're the only one who posted that you could still upgrade for free.
I think that you should just try and see what happens. It's very possible that it still works.
