If you roll back Win10 to Win7...?

[VirtualLarry]

Does it revoke your "digital entitlement"?

As opposed to upgrading to Win10 (after making an image backup, potentially), and then restoring the Win7 or re-installing Win7 (and NOT reverting).

Edit: I picked up some fairly cheap (too cheap?) Win7 Pro licenses on Bonanza, after someone else mentioned that site for licenses. I was e-mailed the keys. Supposedly genuine, one-PC, unlimited re-activations on same PC.

Activated one of the licenses on a laptop for a relative, and it said "Genuine Windows" after activation.

Wondering if I should then do the Win10 upgrade (in-place), to get the "Digital entitlement", and then roll back, as they (and I, on some of my other machines) prefer Win7 for the time being. (But come 2020, things might look different.)

 

[Dahak]

No the "digital entitlement" should still be there if/when you decide to upgrade to 10

Now I say "should" if all goes fine, as that is how it is suppose to work. But sometimes things happen.

What I would do, is even if you do not plan to keep the MS account as the main login, at least login to get it tied to your ms account and then you can see it on your account and in case something goes wrong in the future, it should be there

 

[nerp]

The belief is you don't lose the entitlement. A lot of people are counting on this, including myself for a Win 7 machine i can't run 10 on 24/7. I upgraded and rolled back, error free, just for this reason.

It was actually an impressive operation. Not only did 10 install fast and nicely, the rollback was perfect and everything was intact, as if nothing happened.

 

[Dahak]

The belief is you don't lose the entitlement......

That's what I mentioned tying it to your ms account as an additional step. Because its so new we do know what happens in say 2 years when you go to try to upgrade.
If its tied to your ms account at least you can see it there, and use the activation troubleshooter to select it from that

 

[Elixer]

I wish they would let you print/save/QR code or whatever a way to let you know for sure what is going on.

If you don't have or lose your MS account, how are you supposed to prove that you did the win 10 upgrade?

This is still real murky on how they will deal with all this.

 

[Ketchup]

I wish they would let you print/save/QR code or whatever a way to let you know for sure what is going on.

If you don't have or lose your MS account, how are you supposed to prove that you did the win 10 upgrade?

This is still real murky on how they will deal with all this.

I upgraded a laptop from 7 to 10. The laptop never had access to a "MS account." Always local. I wiped the drive and did a fresh install of 10. It activated without issue. No "proof" necessary.

 

[nerp]

I upgraded a laptop from 7 to 10. The laptop never had access to a "MS account." Always local. I wiped the drive and did a fresh install of 10. It activated without issue. No "proof" necessary.

No, the question is.. Say you reverted back to 7 on that machine after 30 days.

Then, say you tried to upgrade again 2 years from now. Are we 100% sure it will work? The reason why a lot of people are asking is that MS hasn't been fully explicit about this specific scenario.

 

[mv2devnull]

how are you supposed to prove that you did the win 10 upgrade?

That is the part, where the MS telemetry/spying should pay off. Doesn't the license activation actually "call home" to MS to record you machine's signature on their database? How else could they show that you have more than one simultaneous installation with the same key?

They are, naturally, able to deny any existence of such data about you ...


The Windows upgrades apparently make old license "void". For example, on upgrade from 8 to 10, the license of 8 is used to generate a license for 10 and old license is "consumed" in the process. Then you have installation of 10 with license of 10. If you revert to 8, you still have license of 10 use the 8 with, for the license of 10 allows you to install and use an earlier version (within some limits). (My interpretation.)

 

[Ketchup]

No, the question is.. Say you reverted back to 7 on that machine after 30 days.

Then, say you tried to upgrade again 2 years from now. Are we 100% sure it will work? The reason why a lot of people are asking is that MS hasn't been fully explicit about this specific scenario.

Really? You are seriously asking for someone to look into the furure?

Personally, I don't see the difference now vs two years from now, as the second part of this scenario has nothing to do with the free upgrade from 7. And myself and other posters have already seen that it activates fine after a wipe.

The only thing we don't know is if the hardware will support whatever the current release is at that time. The laptop has a Sandy Bridge Pentium, so I hope it will, but who knows?

 

[JackMDS]

In cases like this I would make an image of the Activated Win 10 Activated install (using True Image or the like) before reverting to Win 7 and save it on my server.

Then later, it can be it can "Ghosted" image to an SSD/HD and be used. I.e., when it goes On line after period of time it appears as a Win 10 that was not used for a while and not as new attempt to Upgrade from Win 7 to 10.

 

[nerp]

Really? You are seriously asking for someone to look into the furure?

Personally, I don't see the difference now vs two years from now, as the second part of this scenario has nothing to do with the free upgrade from 7. And myself and other posters have already seen that it activates fine after a wipe.

The only thing we don't know is if the hardware will support whatever the current release is at that time. The laptop has a Sandy Bridge Pentium, so I hope it will, but who knows?

It's a legitimate question because countless tech sites, people like Paul Thurrot and major news sites have said that upgrading and downgrading saves your entitlement forever despite MS confirming it. Sure, it's a tiny segment of the overall computing public, but from past experience, it's bad to expect MS to do the "right" thing all the time if they haven't promised it.