Free In-Place Upgrade from Windows 7/8/8.1 to 10 - When was your most recent one?

I just completed an upgrade from Win7pro to Win10Pro...20h2. Dell Latitude laptop, upgrade went smooth as buttah...came out the other side fully activated...maintained profiles 'n all.

Did my usual routine, ran Dell Command update first...ensure all the latest.
Rig already had Win7 updates from patch manager.
Downloaded the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation tool...ran it...fire in the hole...done in an hour.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Downloaded the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation tool...ran it...fire in the hole...done in an hour.
Click to expand...
When I actually upgrade I use my ISO and go. I image first just in case.;)

If there is no specialty software other than a printer driver I do prefer clean installs. Being residential it is mostly like that.
 
Just completed one today as well. Dell Precision workstation from January of 2016, came loaded with Win7 Pro from the factory. After passing hardware diagnostics and doing some minor cleanup, like @YeOldeStonecat I used Dell Command Update to update the BIOS and drivers to the latest, took a Fabs backup, cloned the HD to a new Samsung SSD with their data migration tool, swapped drives, booted into Windows, then plugged in a 20H2 flash drive created with the media creation tool and ran setup.exe from within Windows. The upgrade was completed inside of 20 minutes. I loaded a single update, checked again with Dell Command Update for new drivers, loaded 3 & out the door she went.
 
HCHTech said:
Just completed one today as well. Dell Precision workstation from January of 2016, came loaded with Win7 Pro from the factory. After passing hardware diagnostics and doing some minor cleanup, like @YeOldeStonecat I used Dell Command Update to update the BIOS and drivers to the latest, took a Fabs backup, cloned the HD to a new Samsung SSD with their data migration tool, swapped drives, booted into Windows, then plugged in a 20H2 flash drive created with the media creation tool and ran setup.exe from within Windows. The upgrade was completed inside of 20 minutes. I loaded a single update, checked again with Dell Command Update for new drivers, loaded 3 & out the door she went.
Click to expand...
That probably wasn’t a technical upgrade. That was probably a win 10 system downgraded to Windows 7. So it has a win 10 key in the bios.
 
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Porthos said:
When I actually upgrade I use my ISO and go. I image first just in case.;)

If there is no specialty software other than a printer driver I do prefer clean installs. Being residential it is mostly like that.
Click to expand...

Sometimes I'll reach for the USB, else I just download that little 9 or whatever meg file from Microsofts site...double tap it..and away it goes. I know it's technically a little slower because it has to pull more data down the internet pipe, but...client I was at, on a 300 meg pipe, and I was updating 4x other Win10 1909 laptops to the 20H2 with the same method at the same time.
 
It all comes down to what one can count on working reliably given the prevailing circumstances.

Like all things, Microsoft gives more than one proverbial road to Rome.
 
I just did one 3 weeks ago for a customer. 7-year-old laptop on Win 7 Home to Win 10 Home. In Place Upgrade went over without issue. I saw him this morning and he reports all good.
He does happen to be a conscientious user and keeps a clean system.
 
If there are not many apps I always do a clean installation run faster, I have had a lot of problem computers going to sleep and not waking up after upgrade.
 
I did two last week, Sony Laptop, and HP desktop. Both Windows 7 COAs on the side of the unit into a fresh Win10 20H2 install.
 
Just did a T520 yesterday.

Dead hard drive, I knew it had win 10 on it before... wasn't sure if it had home or pro. Loaded PRO on the new SSD on a gamble, got it wrong as indicated by the "you need to activate windows" which didn't go away when I tried to activate. Then the lightbulb went off to check the COA as these units almost always (if not always) had Win 7 PRO on them. Sure enough, Win 7 PRO COA under the battery. Went into activation, entered the key from the sticker, badda boom! Activated.

I don't think M$ will ever "shut the door" on these free upgrades. I think as far as they are concerned, it's better than a hacked OS and it's more market share even if they didn't get paid for it.
 
@brandonkick I don't think they can shut the door, the situation you just described is what happens when a free upgrade on a tier 1 factory image doesn't use the OEM key. That thing was upgraded using the OEM's volume key!

NOW you've inputted the OEM COA, so it'll just install and work naturally. But you did so now... well after the free upgrade. If MS shut the door they'd have screaming customers everywhere not able to reinstall due to whatever reason.

In short, it would be a PR nightmare of Biblical proportions while MS's desktop market share is shrinking.

I've seen big companies do stupid stuff, but rarely are they THAT stupid.
 
Sky-Knight said:
If MS shut the door they'd have screaming customers everywhere not able to reinstall due to whatever reason.
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Reinstalling has NOTHING to do with the upgrade. Once you install Windows 10, no matter HOW you get there, a unique hardware hash code is created that is stored on Microsoft Servers. They could discontinue the upgrade but reinstalls would always work. It’s also why you never need ANY COA key on a reinstall. The hash code on file is your key for activation.
 
nlinecomputers said:
Reinstalling has NOTHING to do with the upgrade. Once you install Windows 10, no matter HOW you get there, a unique hardware hash code is created that is stored on Microsoft Servers. They could discontinue the upgrade but reinstalls would always work. It’s also why you never need ANY COA key on a reinstall. The hash code on file is your key for activation.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Since day one, whether it's been called a digital entitlement or digital license, this is how it's worked. Once Windows 10 has been installed and activated on a given piece of hardware, it can be reinstalled in perpetuity without any need for a key of any sort.

I had an ancient Dell Inspiron 1720 that was a play machine that had Windows 10 installed on it before public release (it originally came with Vista) and where several Linux distros were installed between that Win10 Beta and one of the earlier production releases of Win10. You just did a completely clean install and were never asked for a key.

Microsoft could cut off the in-place upgrade from Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 to 10 at will and it will have no impact whatsoever on any machine previously licensed for Windows 10 via that mechanism. Once licensed, always licensed.
 
@nlinecomputers You're missing a critical detail...

That hash code is partially derived from the COA key used on the original install. I've had PLENTY of systems that had Windows 10 installed on them, they refused to reactivate until I manually inserted the COA on the sticker. In 100% of these cases, they've been OEM images activated with different COA numbers than what's on the sticker.

I have no idea why that factory image changes things, but it does. Every system system post manual activation via the sticker's key worked fine. I've even had a few Win8 systems force me to read the key out of the BIOS and manually input it... then they activated and moved on. All of these systems had Win10 installed prior, and on reinstall flipped out.

My point is... crap happens, and that online hash is NOT always accurate.

I've never had a machine that I've used the COA sticker once on, ever need it again either.
 
Sky-Knight said:
My point is... crap happens, and that online hash is NOT always accurate.

I've never had a machine that I've used the COA sticker once on, ever need it again either.
Click to expand...

Well, I can't disagree with your assertion about things occasionally going south. But, and it's an important one, I've never had an issue with Microsoft resolving it by phone when such has presented itself. And after that having been done once I doubt it will need to be done again.

I'm way more willing to presume a reinstall without key will work than it will not. Nothing is 100% except death and taxes.
 
britechguy said:
Well, I can't disagree with your assertion about things occasionally going south. But, and it's an important one, I've never had an issue with Microsoft resolving it by phone when such has presented itself. And after that having been done once I doubt it will need to be done again.

I'm way more willing to presume a reinstall without key will work than it will not. Nothing is 100% except death and taxes.
Click to expand...
I had 20 Windows 8 based Lenovo systems that I had to reimage because MS wouldn't fix it. The problem? The upgrade was based on Lenovo's OEM install, and I was required to do fresh installations on each one with the key in the BIOS... which had to be manually pulled because reasons... to achieve activation.

Once activated, the image based deployment worked. And that was just off a sysprep.

Now that's one instance, but I've had other situations happen too. My point is only this... that online hash? Isn't reliable... and if the COA doesn't work, MS ends up with a PR black eye at a time when they cannot afford it. Therefore, they won't ever close this particular door. Cheaper and easier to simply let the decay of time kill all that old hardware.
 
Dell Opti 7040 done today.
i5, 8 gigs, Crucial SSD
Win7 on a domain, "in place upgrade" to latest 20H2 by going to the Windows 10 media creation tool website, downloading the little file, running it..and away we go! Done in about 45 minutes. Already was fairly up to date from Dell Command update.
 
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