If you just want my question, it's this: as long as I use the same PC, will I be able to switch between Win8 and Win10 indefinitely (or at least as long as Win8 is supported), using only the free upgrade, without a new product key?
Background for the question, in case it doesn't make sense:
In case you didn't know, you don't need a product key to activate Windows 10, as long as you install it the first time by starting the Win10 setup from a genuine, activated version of Windows 8. That's what I did.
As I understand from internet articles, and as my experience seems to confirm, once you do that and connect to the internet, Microsoft makes some kind of hash from your hardware and stores it on its servers. You can then do a clean install of Win10 on a bare drive, without entering any product keys, and once you connect to the internet, Microsoft will check to see if your hardware is already registered (it evidently doesn't care if you switch hard drives; it's looking at MB, video card, etc.) If it is, then it activates Win 10 for you as part of the setup, even though you did a clean install on a bare drive and didn't enter a key. I tried that with a brand new drive, and it works.
But I still have several drives that boot up with Win 8.1. I've always found it easier and faster to use separate drives with separate boot partitions instead of a multi-boot scheme. I have several physical drives, and of course my MB allows me to pick which drive to boot from, so I just restart my PC and point to a different drive to switch between Win 8 and Win 10. I want to keep using Win8 as my main OS, because everything is working the way I want on it, but I also want to keep using Win10 because it has some advantages, and I'll slowly migrate my programs and data over to it over the next year.
So, right now, I can boot from either a Win8 or a Win10 drive, and they both show up as activated. But I also heard on some radio show that Microsoft only allows you one month to switch back if you don't like Win10. I've searched online, but I get so many hits for very basic articles about upgrading to Win10 that I might as well just search on Windows.
So is it allowing me to switch back and forth now because I'm still inside one month, or will I be able to continue switching back and forth indefinitely? Thanks for any help, and links to credible sources will be especially appreciated.
Background for the question, in case it doesn't make sense:
In case you didn't know, you don't need a product key to activate Windows 10, as long as you install it the first time by starting the Win10 setup from a genuine, activated version of Windows 8. That's what I did.
As I understand from internet articles, and as my experience seems to confirm, once you do that and connect to the internet, Microsoft makes some kind of hash from your hardware and stores it on its servers. You can then do a clean install of Win10 on a bare drive, without entering any product keys, and once you connect to the internet, Microsoft will check to see if your hardware is already registered (it evidently doesn't care if you switch hard drives; it's looking at MB, video card, etc.) If it is, then it activates Win 10 for you as part of the setup, even though you did a clean install on a bare drive and didn't enter a key. I tried that with a brand new drive, and it works.
But I still have several drives that boot up with Win 8.1. I've always found it easier and faster to use separate drives with separate boot partitions instead of a multi-boot scheme. I have several physical drives, and of course my MB allows me to pick which drive to boot from, so I just restart my PC and point to a different drive to switch between Win 8 and Win 10. I want to keep using Win8 as my main OS, because everything is working the way I want on it, but I also want to keep using Win10 because it has some advantages, and I'll slowly migrate my programs and data over to it over the next year.
So, right now, I can boot from either a Win8 or a Win10 drive, and they both show up as activated. But I also heard on some radio show that Microsoft only allows you one month to switch back if you don't like Win10. I've searched online, but I get so many hits for very basic articles about upgrading to Win10 that I might as well just search on Windows.
So is it allowing me to switch back and forth now because I'm still inside one month, or will I be able to continue switching back and forth indefinitely? Thanks for any help, and links to credible sources will be especially appreciated.
