Windows 10 can be activated directly with older keys

[Spicedaddy]

I had an old Windows 7 Pro license that wasn't used, and wanted to use it for a Windows 10 installation on a new MacBook Pro (in BootCamp).

Until a few weeks ago, the way to use the old license would've been to install Win7, install all updates, and upgrade to Win10. After this, your hardware is registered with Microsoft, and you could do a clean install of Win10 without a serial. Big waste of time, and even worse, the 2015 MacBooks don't support Win7 anymore.

I saw an announcement a few weeks ago that MS had changed this in the newest build of Win10, and that they were going to allow activation with older keys. So I installed the 1511 build of Windows 10 (ISO from MS) on my MacBook Pro, and successfully activated with my old Win7 key, without ever having installed Win7 on it.

So if you want Win10 activated with an old key, don't waste your time installing older versions.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Don't act surprised when this thread gets locked because this is already posted.

 

[Dahak]

Yes, that is a feature they added to the November 1511 build.

If you try to do that with the previous build it will not work.
Just stating that in case people come across this and they could not get it to work due to the previous build

 

[Kaido]

Thank goodness. That whole procedure was getting old!