Win 7 / 10 activation

[oldgreyguy1]

So, I have an older HP laptop, bought it with Win7 64bit, when Win 10 hatched, swallowed the Koolaid and upgraded...
Now, 5-6 yrs later, hard drive failed, had a good used one, tested, formatted, installed, added some memory, and... installed 7 SP1, then did an in place upgrade..
Dreaded Activation Failure, hmmm, wiped drive and...
Installed Win 10 clean, still cannot activate using my Win7 key.
am I doomed to Win7 or ???
thanks, Bill

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The procedure for a clean reinstall of W10 on a previously upgraded PC where W10 was activated before the reinstallation, is when you are asked to select the version of W10 you want to install, you select the version of W10 that was activated on the PC beforehand (Home or Pro).

Then you are asked to enter a product key.

Select the 'I don't have a product key' option, and W10 will install and is supposed to automatically activate after you are connected to the internet.

Up until October of 2023, using the W7 key to reactivate W10 was not a problem but last year Microsoft closed the loophole that allowed users to continue to get the free upgrade to W10 long after the free upgrade period expired in July 2016.

So, the only suggestion I can offer would be to try reinstalling W10 using the above approach and hope it activates.

I just hope when you tried the in-place upgrade from W7>W10 it didn't mess up the activation info Microsoft had on its servers.

If it did, you will have to live with W7, because it is not worth buying W10 at this point in time since it is going out of support next year.