Can one not go back to Win7/Win8 after 30 days of being on Win10?

[chucky2]

I'm a little confused on the Microsoft official line of being able to revert back to Win7/Win8 after being on Win10.

I get that in the 30 days, if one so wishes, you can revert back to your previous Win7/Win8 install (providing of course one did an upgrade instead of a clean install of Win10). That part is clear.

What isn't clear to me is what happens at day, say, 35? If I want to go back to Win7/Win8, it sounds like the reversion option won't be present in Win10 - which I'm fine with. But I can still perform a clean install of Win7/Win8 and activate still with my Win7/Win8, right? Or will that key now not activate because I was running it when I upgraded to Win10?

Another question I have that is sort of no clear to me is: If I'm running Win7 right now, go to Win10 (first upgrade then do clean Win10 install), just to see how Win10 will run on this older machine, and then after like 1 day do a clean install of the Win7 I upgraded from, what happens in say 10 months when I want to upgrade that machine to Win10 this time permanently? Will I still be able to, or, did I need to remain on Win10 the first time for some period of time?

Sorry if these have been asked before, I looked some and couldn't find clear answers to them...

Chuck

 

[JackMDS]

The stored recovery of Win 7 on the upgraded computer gets auto erased after 30 days, thus there is Nothing to recover any more.

 

[blackangst1]

You can do a clean install of Win 7 if you'd like. Your key is still good.

edit: To answer your 2nd question, everything Ive read it once youve got a registered "copy" of Win10 with MS, you can go back to Win10 any time for free. Assuming you have no major hardware changes.

 

[SparkyJJO]

What they said.

 

[Socio]

Your best bet and what I am going to do prior to installing 10, that is when I make the jump, is copy/migrate my Win7 installation to a new drive, hot swap it with the original drive and install 10 to it.

This way if I don't like 10 I just hot swap drives back to my original Win7 installation drive, and have my Win7 up running in less than a minute or two like nothing happened.

Later if I want to go back to 10, just hot swap back.

 

[Tom]

You can do a clean install of Win 7 if you'd like. Your key is still good.

edit: To answer your 2nd question, everything Ive read it once youve got a registered "copy" of Win10 with MS, you can go back to Win10 any time for free. Assuming you have no major hardware changes.

What about a new hard drive ?

 

[SparkyJJO]

hard drive change is fine. It is the motherboard primarily they are referring to for the major hardware as that changes the computer's ID.

 

[chucky2]

Thanks All for the replies!

I'm tempted to install 10 to see how it goes on this older computer but since I know long term he's going to get a GTX 950, and this is onboard video, not sure what'll happen if I put 10 on now, and then later (months down the road) do a fresh install of 10 with the 950 installed. I wonder how 10 activation would like that...

Socio that is a good idea, I think I'll suggest/do that at the time he goes to 10...just in case...

Chuck

 

[IGBT]

I restored back after 3 days. (Win 7 and win 8.1)