Partition cloning and the win10 upgrade: win7 -> win7+win7 -> win7+win10 ?

[marlinman]

The PC in my sig runs a licensed copy of win7 (as well as the BootIt NG boot/partition manager). Let's say I've cloned my small OS partition and added the clone win7 partition to the list of OSes BootIt presents on powering system on. If I upgrade the clone partition to win10, will I end up with licensed win10 and licensed win7 OSes? Or will the win7 license be revoked on upgrade, leaving me with a non-genuine win7 and a genuine win10?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The PC in my sig runs a licensed copy of win7 (as well as the BootIt NG boot/partition manager). Let's say I've cloned my small OS partition and added the clone win7 partition to the list of OSes BootIt presents on powering system on. If I upgrade the clone partition to win10, will I end up with licensed win10 and licensed win7 OSes? Or will the win7 license be revoked on upgrade, leaving me with a non-genuine win7 and a genuine win10?

No -- to your misgivings.

Your BootIt NG may actually complicate things, but assuming it's not in the equation, you could free up space on your Win 7 boot disk to leave enough "unallocated" and create a logical volume with the clean installation of Win 10. The installation would automatically create a boot-time menu to choose between Win 7 and Win 10 -- both using the same activation code knitted to your hardware.

Or you could add another SDD/HDD and install the Win 10 on that, but the boot files would remain on the Win 7 disk, with the Win 10 system files on the new drive. It would result in the same dual-boot configuration with a clean install of Win 10.

 

[marlinman]

Since posting, I've learned that I can simply upgrade my (single) win7 install to win10, immediately downgrade back to win7, and (all being well) earn a 'lifetime' win10 license for the PC in question.

I only want to take advantage of the offer in case future DX12 games interest me, so this seems like the 'path of least effort' for now. Thx anyway, BD.

 

[Elixer]

On the upgrade, make SURE you are activated, since if it don't show that, it won't be the next time you try to install windows 10 again.

Also, it IS better to clone the system instead of doing the downgrade, since that doesn't always goes as smoothly as people want.