Windows 10 won't accept license Key

I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be 32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7 install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one, and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be 32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7 install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one, and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems are
home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing Windows 10
on one system so maybe I might try a different one before I resort to
making a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your stuff.

Regards.

Al.

Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be 32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7 install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one, and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems are
home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing Windows 10
on one system so maybe I might try a different one before I resort to
making a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your stuff.

Regards.

Al.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/win...-on-an-upgrade

If you follow the logic there, the intention for free upgrade
installations, is to do them as Upgrade installs.

That means:

1) Boot Win7 *SP1* x64 Ultimate laptop.
2) Insert Win10 Pro x64 DVD. Execute setup.exe
from the DVD.
3) If it probes the OS and sees the Ultimate key,
that should map to Pro. There are five Win7
trim levels and only two Win10 trim levels, and
there is a mapping as to which Win10 one ro use
(Core or Pro).
4) AFAIK, it should not present a key request at all.
If you see the box for inserting 25 letters, you
blew it.

Similarly, if you *boot* the Win10 DVD, the DVD
will refuse to probe the machine for qualifying
OSes. I tried this in a VM (in a half-assed way),
and (doh!) got the prompt for the 25 letter key.

So the very first time, the new OS installer
wants a "sniff" of your running OS. That's why
you're doing an upgrade style install for your
first attempt. Even if this attempt is just a
"fake install" to get your activation event
recorded at Microsoft.

Later, if you have the same computer, you
*boot* the Win10 DVD and install from scratch,
now on this attempt, you'll see the LAN interface
send a few packets, they'll look up the hardware
hash for your machine, and see you already
converted some qualifying OS, to the Win10 upgrade
version. And consequently, again, the key prompt
should not appear. It should activate quietly.

So to generate the activation record, and have
your hardware hash uploaded to Microsoft,
you need to run setup.exe off the Win10 DVD,
while the Win7 qualifying OS is running. And
as GBM says, "make sure everything that has to
match, matches".

I can't and won't test that exact scenario here,
because I have no plan to convert any Windows 7
machines to Win10. Maybe someone else who has
burned a half dozen licenses, can give a rundown
on what worked or didn't work. I'm happy with
my Insider copy, which is good enough for
quick checks of features.

Paul

"Al Drake" wrote in message
...
On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be 32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7 install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one, and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems are
home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing Windows 10 on
one system so maybe I might try a different one before I resort to making
a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your
stuff.

Regards.

Al.

To add to what Paul and GlowingBlueMist (I saw that once, back in the 60's)
posted, the Media Creation Tool instructions state somewhere that the
upgrade must be run "from within the qualifying OS." So you would have to do
as Paul stated- start Windows, put the DVD in, and run setup there. Or, run
setup from within the C:\$WINDOWS.~BT or C:\$WINDOWS.~WS folder, whichever
you may have setup in. Mine are in the WS folder under \Sources\Windows.

--
SC Tom

On 7/31/2015 5:55 AM, Paul wrote:
Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I
upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7
Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be 32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7 install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one, and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems
are home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing
Windows 10 on one system so maybe I might try a different one before I
resort to making a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your
stuff.

Regards.

Al.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/win...-on-an-upgrade


If you follow the logic there, the intention for free upgrade
installations, is to do them as Upgrade installs.

That means:

1) Boot Win7 *SP1* x64 Ultimate laptop.
2) Insert Win10 Pro x64 DVD. Execute setup.exe
from the DVD.
3) If it probes the OS and sees the Ultimate key,
that should map to Pro. There are five Win7
trim levels and only two Win10 trim levels, and
there is a mapping as to which Win10 one ro use
(Core or Pro).
4) AFAIK, it should not present a key request at all.
If you see the box for inserting 25 letters, you
blew it.

Similarly, if you *boot* the Win10 DVD, the DVD
will refuse to probe the machine for qualifying
OSes. I tried this in a VM (in a half-assed way),
and (doh!) got the prompt for the 25 letter key.

So the very first time, the new OS installer
wants a "sniff" of your running OS. That's why
you're doing an upgrade style install for your
first attempt. Even if this attempt is just a
"fake install" to get your activation event
recorded at Microsoft.

Later, if you have the same computer, you
*boot* the Win10 DVD and install from scratch,
now on this attempt, you'll see the LAN interface
send a few packets, they'll look up the hardware
hash for your machine, and see you already
converted some qualifying OS, to the Win10 upgrade
version. And consequently, again, the key prompt
should not appear. It should activate quietly.

So to generate the activation record, and have
your hardware hash uploaded to Microsoft,
you need to run setup.exe off the Win10 DVD,
while the Win7 qualifying OS is running. And
as GBM says, "make sure everything that has to
match, matches".

I can't and won't test that exact scenario here,
because I have no plan to convert any Windows 7
machines to Win10. Maybe someone else who has
burned a half dozen licenses, can give a rundown
on what worked or didn't work. I'm happy with
my Insider copy, which is good enough for
quick checks of features.

Paul

My laptop which fortunately is for things like playing with new OS'es
did not take too kindly to the upgrade install. I did the Windows
updates and got rid of my security software.

I got to the part about installing the Win10 update and got a message
that Windows couldn't tell if my PC was ready for the install, not once,
but twice. So, I grabbed the ISO and did a clean install, ignoring the
request for a product key because I didn't have one. I didn't try my 8.1
Pro product key because that wasn't what it was looking for.

I did get the clean install done, but Nvidia broke my system with the
crappy driver that was recommended for the install so I downloaded and
installed drivers until I found one that worked for my machine. The
first error message from Nvidia was no compatible hardware could be
found and another was graphics driver couldn't be installed while new
hardware wizard was open. But, I found one.

Now I have a functioning laptop, well kinda functioning because I can't
activate Windows. There's a product key buried in there. It showed the
last 4 digits on the update/recovery screen in Win 10...Belarc didn't
pull it out, but MagicJellyBean did. I'm not sure why it's there.
Fortunately I have all my product keys and all my retail disks and am
hoping sometime I'll be able to get this install activated. Fortunately
also I have my 8.1 Pro installed backed up. There's so little on the
laptop, it should take too long to get it backup and running if need be.

After all this I got the message some folks have gotten about too many
devices are hooked up to my Windows 10 PC and I have to delete them.
That was the icing on the old byte cake.

I contacted Microsoft and was able to get thru to a rep who asked for my
error code which I gave him and he told me to wait 48 hours before
trying authentication again because of server overload.

I'm not sure that's gonna solve my issue. First of all, I forced the
Win10 download and didn't go the reservation route. I'm not sure that
would have changed the outcome. We'll see what happens next.

On 7/31/2015 7:19 AM, SC Tom wrote:


"Al Drake" wrote in message
...
On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I
upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7
Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be 32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7 install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one, and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems
are home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing
Windows 10 on one system so maybe I might try a different one before I
resort to making a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your
stuff.

Regards.

Al.

To add to what Paul and GlowingBlueMist (I saw that once, back in the
60's) posted, the Media Creation Tool instructions state somewhere that
the upgrade must be run "from within the qualifying OS." So you would
have to do as Paul stated- start Windows, put the DVD in, and run setup
there. Or, run setup from within the C:\$WINDOWS.~BT or C:\$WINDOWS.~WS
folder, whichever you may have setup in. Mine are in the WS folder under
\Sources\Windows.

What I was doing wrong was booting from the DVD ISO file. I ran setup
from within Win7 and got a different scenario but this time I was
presented with a report that it could not go forward on the reserved
partition. I expect it's too small so now I'll clone or restore image to
a new Samsung 850 EVO I have sitting on a shelf. I knew it would come in
handy eventually. Now lets hope that will solve the problem.

On 7/31/2015 5:55 AM, Paul wrote:
Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I
upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7
Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be 32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7 install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one, and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems
are home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing
Windows 10 on one system so maybe I might try a different one before I
resort to making a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your
stuff.

Regards.

Al.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/win...-on-an-upgrade


If you follow the logic there, the intention for free upgrade
installations, is to do them as Upgrade installs.

That means:

1) Boot Win7 *SP1* x64 Ultimate laptop.
2) Insert Win10 Pro x64 DVD. Execute setup.exe
from the DVD.
3) If it probes the OS and sees the Ultimate key,
that should map to Pro. There are five Win7
trim levels and only two Win10 trim levels, and
there is a mapping as to which Win10 one ro use
(Core or Pro).
4) AFAIK, it should not present a key request at all.
If you see the box for inserting 25 letters, you
blew it.

Similarly, if you *boot* the Win10 DVD, the DVD
will refuse to probe the machine for qualifying
OSes. I tried this in a VM (in a half-assed way),
and (doh!) got the prompt for the 25 letter key.

So the very first time, the new OS installer
wants a "sniff" of your running OS. That's why
you're doing an upgrade style install for your
first attempt. Even if this attempt is just a
"fake install" to get your activation event
recorded at Microsoft.

Later, if you have the same computer, you
*boot* the Win10 DVD and install from scratch,
now on this attempt, you'll see the LAN interface
send a few packets, they'll look up the hardware
hash for your machine, and see you already
converted some qualifying OS, to the Win10 upgrade
version. And consequently, again, the key prompt
should not appear. It should activate quietly.

So to generate the activation record, and have
your hardware hash uploaded to Microsoft,
you need to run setup.exe off the Win10 DVD,
while the Win7 qualifying OS is running. And
as GBM says, "make sure everything that has to
match, matches".

I can't and won't test that exact scenario here,
because I have no plan to convert any Windows 7
machines to Win10. Maybe someone else who has
burned a half dozen licenses, can give a rundown
on what worked or didn't work. I'm happy with
my Insider copy, which is good enough for
quick checks of features.

Paul

I followed the procedure you described and ran the setup file which
went fine until I got a report the upgrade could not be performed on the
"reserved partition". At that point I was using a small SSD so I cloned
it to a 500G SSD but that resulted in the same end. I tried to allow
updates and again denying them but neither did any good. Now I have no
idea what to do other than contacting support.

Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 5:55 AM, Paul wrote:
Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I
upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7
Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10
Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be
32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7 install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one, and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still
have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems
are home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing
Windows 10 on one system so maybe I might try a different one before I
resort to making a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your
stuff.

Regards.

Al.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/win...-on-an-upgrade



If you follow the logic there, the intention for free upgrade
installations, is to do them as Upgrade installs.

That means:

1) Boot Win7 *SP1* x64 Ultimate laptop.
2) Insert Win10 Pro x64 DVD. Execute setup.exe
from the DVD.
3) If it probes the OS and sees the Ultimate key,
that should map to Pro. There are five Win7
trim levels and only two Win10 trim levels, and
there is a mapping as to which Win10 one ro use
(Core or Pro).
4) AFAIK, it should not present a key request at all.
If you see the box for inserting 25 letters, you
blew it.

Similarly, if you *boot* the Win10 DVD, the DVD
will refuse to probe the machine for qualifying
OSes. I tried this in a VM (in a half-assed way),
and (doh!) got the prompt for the 25 letter key.

So the very first time, the new OS installer
wants a "sniff" of your running OS. That's why
you're doing an upgrade style install for your
first attempt. Even if this attempt is just a
"fake install" to get your activation event
recorded at Microsoft.

Later, if you have the same computer, you
*boot* the Win10 DVD and install from scratch,
now on this attempt, you'll see the LAN interface
send a few packets, they'll look up the hardware
hash for your machine, and see you already
converted some qualifying OS, to the Win10 upgrade
version. And consequently, again, the key prompt
should not appear. It should activate quietly.

So to generate the activation record, and have
your hardware hash uploaded to Microsoft,
you need to run setup.exe off the Win10 DVD,
while the Win7 qualifying OS is running. And
as GBM says, "make sure everything that has to
match, matches".

I can't and won't test that exact scenario here,
because I have no plan to convert any Windows 7
machines to Win10. Maybe someone else who has
burned a half dozen licenses, can give a rundown
on what worked or didn't work. I'm happy with
my Insider copy, which is good enough for
quick checks of features.

Paul

I followed the procedure you described and ran the setup file which
went fine until I got a report the upgrade could not be performed on the
"reserved partition". At that point I was using a small SSD so I cloned
it to a 500G SSD but that resulted in the same end. I tried to allow
updates and again denying them but neither did any good. Now I have no
idea what to do other than contacting support.



When I entered some of your terms in a search, "System Reserved"
might have been the name in question.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...b1aa2e5?auth=1

Perhaps what it means, is the installer does not think there is
room to modify the contents of System Reserved.

System Reserved is a partition that is not given a drive
letter on purpose. That is supposed to prevent System Restore
from running, creating a System Volume Information on the
partition, and using up all the space.

Now, something I tested recently, I did a test install in
a VM, and the Win10 Preview managed to install without
modifying the System Reserved partition. (In fact, it impressed
me by not complaining about a lack of space, and doing the
install anyway!) And I was surprised, because there were other
reports of it making a 450MB partition for that purpose.

Some other possibilities are, that you have a GPT partitioned
disk, rather than MBR. Not that this is important, but
it would be another variable, and a different set of issues
for the installer logic. Since GPT allows an "infinite"
number of partitions, it's certainly more flexible.

Other possibilities for Windows 7 include running
one-partition and two-partition installations. For example,
on my laptop, it shipped with

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved | C: partition |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

I used the TerabyteUnlimited procedure to make a one partition
installation. This involves moving \boot from SR to C:,
amongst other things. This frees up a primary partition
for dual-boot fun.
Boot flag 0x80
+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | | C: partition |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

And the Win10 installer would have to deal with both cases,
since if you install Win7 on a disk with a blank NTFS partition
and tell it to install in just that partition, it will do so.
For example, before Win7 Home Premium installs, you could
feed it this, and point it at the empty partition. The
C: and \boot stuff ends up in the one-partition.

+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | | Empty NTFS |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

Win10, on its first installation, may make yet another partition
which holds a WIM or ESD. That's a relatively small partition
as well.

But my suspicion is, whatever the problem, it's with
System Reserved.

I don't even know if moving C: up the disk a bit, so
System Reserved could be expanded, would make the installer
happy. Or you really would need to do the work for it.
Like, make it a tiny bit larger than it is now.

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved | C: partition |
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+

If you're a forensics expert, you could also
check the "fill" on System Reserved. The last time
I checked one here, maybe it said "84MB" worth of
files. Check to see if yours is perhaps almost
full, and that's what the installer is complaining
about. You may have initiated this, by an attempt
to assign a drive letter, like this... Don't make
it drive D: .

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved D: | C: partition |
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+

Really, 500MB should be enough for just about
anything, assuming some space didn't get used in
there unintentionally.

On the Windows 7 system, you can turn System Restore
Off and On, to dump any restore points. That's
a quick way, for any partition currently having
SR running against it, to get the disk space back
from it. Having System Restore on at the time of installation,
may help with any backout the installer needs to do.
Maybe the installer turns it On anyway, if it's Off.

Paul

Al Drake wrote on 07/31/2015 2:37 AM:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?


Windows 10 upgrade doesn't ask for a product key.
- enter of prior qualifying o/s product key is by design supposed to fail.

To upgrade to Windows 10 use
- Windows Update
or
- MSFT Media Creation Tool

If the latter, when running the tool choose 'Upgrade Now' or the option
to create media (create the media, load the qualifying o/s and run
setup.exe on the media.)

Note: Ensure the port/device does not have a higher boot priority than
the hard drive. Win 10 upgrade restarts multiple times...the presence of
the media in the device if a higher boot priority than the location of
the os you are upgrading to Windows 10 will boot the media and run
setup.exe again, and again on each restart.

--
...winston
msft mvp windows experience

On 7/31/2015 5:33 PM, . . .winston wrote:
Al Drake wrote on 07/31/2015 2:37 AM:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?


Windows 10 upgrade doesn't ask for a product key.
- enter of prior qualifying o/s product key is by design supposed to
fail.

To upgrade to Windows 10 use
- Windows Update
or
- MSFT Media Creation Tool

If the latter, when running the tool choose 'Upgrade Now' or the option
to create media (create the media, load the qualifying o/s and run
setup.exe on the media.)

Note: Ensure the port/device does not have a higher boot priority than
the hard drive. Win 10 upgrade restarts multiple times...the presence of
the media in the device if a higher boot priority than the location of
the os you are upgrading to Windows 10 will boot the media and run
setup.exe again, and again on each restart.

I had been running the setup file from within Windows 7 and
continually I was getting the same failed results until I altered the
SSD by merging some partitions. That resulted in a failure to boot into
Win7 until I used Macrium Reflect restore disk to rebuild the MBR.

Now it seems the install is going forward. The only ill report I
received was something about a need to install a language package later.
Somehow I must have selected something wrong when the ISO was created.

On 7/31/2015 5:26 PM, Paul wrote:
Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 5:55 AM, Paul wrote:
Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I
upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7
Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the
Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10
Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is
for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium
license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be
32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7
install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one,
and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original
license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first
do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing
down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the
PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still
have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be
able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems
are home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing
Windows 10 on one system so maybe I might try a different one before I
resort to making a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your
stuff.

Regards.

Al.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/win...-on-an-upgrade



If you follow the logic there, the intention for free upgrade
installations, is to do them as Upgrade installs.

That means:

1) Boot Win7 *SP1* x64 Ultimate laptop.
2) Insert Win10 Pro x64 DVD. Execute setup.exe
from the DVD.
3) If it probes the OS and sees the Ultimate key,
that should map to Pro. There are five Win7
trim levels and only two Win10 trim levels, and
there is a mapping as to which Win10 one ro use
(Core or Pro).
4) AFAIK, it should not present a key request at all.
If you see the box for inserting 25 letters, you
blew it.

Similarly, if you *boot* the Win10 DVD, the DVD
will refuse to probe the machine for qualifying
OSes. I tried this in a VM (in a half-assed way),
and (doh!) got the prompt for the 25 letter key.

So the very first time, the new OS installer
wants a "sniff" of your running OS. That's why
you're doing an upgrade style install for your
first attempt. Even if this attempt is just a
"fake install" to get your activation event
recorded at Microsoft.

Later, if you have the same computer, you
*boot* the Win10 DVD and install from scratch,
now on this attempt, you'll see the LAN interface
send a few packets, they'll look up the hardware
hash for your machine, and see you already
converted some qualifying OS, to the Win10 upgrade
version. And consequently, again, the key prompt
should not appear. It should activate quietly.

So to generate the activation record, and have
your hardware hash uploaded to Microsoft,
you need to run setup.exe off the Win10 DVD,
while the Win7 qualifying OS is running. And
as GBM says, "make sure everything that has to
match, matches".

I can't and won't test that exact scenario here,
because I have no plan to convert any Windows 7
machines to Win10. Maybe someone else who has
burned a half dozen licenses, can give a rundown
on what worked or didn't work. I'm happy with
my Insider copy, which is good enough for
quick checks of features.

Paul

I followed the procedure you described and ran the setup file which
went fine until I got a report the upgrade could not be performed on
the "reserved partition". At that point I was using a small SSD so I
cloned it to a 500G SSD but that resulted in the same end. I tried to
allow updates and again denying them but neither did any good. Now I
have no idea what to do other than contacting support.



When I entered some of your terms in a search, "System Reserved"
might have been the name in question.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...b1aa2e5?auth=1


Perhaps what it means, is the installer does not think there is
room to modify the contents of System Reserved.

System Reserved is a partition that is not given a drive
letter on purpose. That is supposed to prevent System Restore
from running, creating a System Volume Information on the
partition, and using up all the space.

Now, something I tested recently, I did a test install in
a VM, and the Win10 Preview managed to install without
modifying the System Reserved partition. (In fact, it impressed
me by not complaining about a lack of space, and doing the
install anyway!) And I was surprised, because there were other
reports of it making a 450MB partition for that purpose.

Some other possibilities are, that you have a GPT partitioned
disk, rather than MBR. Not that this is important, but
it would be another variable, and a different set of issues
for the installer logic. Since GPT allows an "infinite"
number of partitions, it's certainly more flexible.

Other possibilities for Windows 7 include running
one-partition and two-partition installations. For example,
on my laptop, it shipped with

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved | C: partition |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

I used the TerabyteUnlimited procedure to make a one partition
installation. This involves moving \boot from SR to C:,
amongst other things. This frees up a primary partition
for dual-boot fun.
Boot flag 0x80
+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | | C: partition |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

And the Win10 installer would have to deal with both cases,
since if you install Win7 on a disk with a blank NTFS partition
and tell it to install in just that partition, it will do so.
For example, before Win7 Home Premium installs, you could
feed it this, and point it at the empty partition. The
C: and \boot stuff ends up in the one-partition.

+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | | Empty NTFS |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

Win10, on its first installation, may make yet another partition
which holds a WIM or ESD. That's a relatively small partition
as well.

But my suspicion is, whatever the problem, it's with
System Reserved.

I don't even know if moving C: up the disk a bit, so
System Reserved could be expanded, would make the installer
happy. Or you really would need to do the work for it.
Like, make it a tiny bit larger than it is now.

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved | C: partition |
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+

If you're a forensics expert, you could also
check the "fill" on System Reserved. The last time
I checked one here, maybe it said "84MB" worth of
files. Check to see if yours is perhaps almost
full, and that's what the installer is complaining
about. You may have initiated this, by an attempt
to assign a drive letter, like this... Don't make
it drive D: .

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved D: | C: partition |
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+

Really, 500MB should be enough for just about
anything, assuming some space didn't get used in
there unintentionally.

On the Windows 7 system, you can turn System Restore
Off and On, to dump any restore points. That's
a quick way, for any partition currently having
SR running against it, to get the disk space back
from it. Having System Restore on at the time of installation,
may help with any backout the installer needs to do.
Maybe the installer turns it On anyway, if it's Off.

Paul

I looked at the destination drive and noticed some extra partitions so
I merged them and restored the MBR and all seems to be progressing fine
at this point of the first restart. Now I see a different screen (Black)
which tells me to "sit back and relax, have a beer and spark one"

Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 5:26 PM, Paul wrote:
Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 5:55 AM, Paul wrote:
Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 4:06 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 7/31/2015 1:37 AM, Al Drake wrote:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just
won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for
the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system,
both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I
upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7
Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the
Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10
Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is
for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium
license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?

No Microsoft will not allow you to mix Home/Pro versions with the W10
upgrade. If the existing W7 is home the W10 has to be home and if the
original install was say 32-bit the W10 "upgrade" also has to be
32-bit.

Nice thing is that the license keys are not bit sensitive. A W7
install
using a 32-bit retail DVD on a machine that has 64-bit hardware can
later be fresh installed, as in new hard drive or erased old one,
and a
64-bit retail DVD used to install things, and with the original
license
that was used for the original 32-bit install.

I do think that as it presently is working, you would have to upgrade
say the original 32-bit W7 to a 64-bit OS you would have to first
do an
upgrade with 32-bit W10 to get a working W10 license, and then put in
the W10 64 bit DVD and request a fresh install after first writing
down
the 32-bit W10 license so you would have it to put back into the
PC. If
the hardware is new enough the license should have already been
transferred to the motherboard but on real old systems you still
have to
hand transfer the license.

As a last resort, since this is an upgrade issue, you should be
able to
call Microsoft for assistance provided they still have anyone awake
after the major storm of callers asking for help.

Well then it looks like I have no options and will have to contact
Microsoft as no matter what Key I try nothing works. All my systems
are home built Win 7 64-Bit Ultimate. I've only tried installing
Windows 10 on one system so maybe I might try a different one before I
resort to making a call.

Thanks for your help GlowingBlueMist, it seems you really know your
stuff.

Regards.

Al.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/win...-on-an-upgrade




If you follow the logic there, the intention for free upgrade
installations, is to do them as Upgrade installs.

That means:

1) Boot Win7 *SP1* x64 Ultimate laptop.
2) Insert Win10 Pro x64 DVD. Execute setup.exe
from the DVD.
3) If it probes the OS and sees the Ultimate key,
that should map to Pro. There are five Win7
trim levels and only two Win10 trim levels, and
there is a mapping as to which Win10 one ro use
(Core or Pro).
4) AFAIK, it should not present a key request at all.
If you see the box for inserting 25 letters, you
blew it.

Similarly, if you *boot* the Win10 DVD, the DVD
will refuse to probe the machine for qualifying
OSes. I tried this in a VM (in a half-assed way),
and (doh!) got the prompt for the 25 letter key.

So the very first time, the new OS installer
wants a "sniff" of your running OS. That's why
you're doing an upgrade style install for your
first attempt. Even if this attempt is just a
"fake install" to get your activation event
recorded at Microsoft.

Later, if you have the same computer, you
*boot* the Win10 DVD and install from scratch,
now on this attempt, you'll see the LAN interface
send a few packets, they'll look up the hardware
hash for your machine, and see you already
converted some qualifying OS, to the Win10 upgrade
version. And consequently, again, the key prompt
should not appear. It should activate quietly.

So to generate the activation record, and have
your hardware hash uploaded to Microsoft,
you need to run setup.exe off the Win10 DVD,
while the Win7 qualifying OS is running. And
as GBM says, "make sure everything that has to
match, matches".

I can't and won't test that exact scenario here,
because I have no plan to convert any Windows 7
machines to Win10. Maybe someone else who has
burned a half dozen licenses, can give a rundown
on what worked or didn't work. I'm happy with
my Insider copy, which is good enough for
quick checks of features.

Paul

I followed the procedure you described and ran the setup file which
went fine until I got a report the upgrade could not be performed on
the "reserved partition". At that point I was using a small SSD so I
cloned it to a 500G SSD but that resulted in the same end. I tried to
allow updates and again denying them but neither did any good. Now I
have no idea what to do other than contacting support.



When I entered some of your terms in a search, "System Reserved"
might have been the name in question.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...b1aa2e5?auth=1



Perhaps what it means, is the installer does not think there is
room to modify the contents of System Reserved.

System Reserved is a partition that is not given a drive
letter on purpose. That is supposed to prevent System Restore
from running, creating a System Volume Information on the
partition, and using up all the space.

Now, something I tested recently, I did a test install in
a VM, and the Win10 Preview managed to install without
modifying the System Reserved partition. (In fact, it impressed
me by not complaining about a lack of space, and doing the
install anyway!) And I was surprised, because there were other
reports of it making a 450MB partition for that purpose.

Some other possibilities are, that you have a GPT partitioned
disk, rather than MBR. Not that this is important, but
it would be another variable, and a different set of issues
for the installer logic. Since GPT allows an "infinite"
number of partitions, it's certainly more flexible.

Other possibilities for Windows 7 include running
one-partition and two-partition installations. For example,
on my laptop, it shipped with

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved | C: partition |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

I used the TerabyteUnlimited procedure to make a one partition
installation. This involves moving \boot from SR to C:,
amongst other things. This frees up a primary partition
for dual-boot fun.
Boot flag 0x80
+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | | C: partition |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

And the Win10 installer would have to deal with both cases,
since if you install Win7 on a disk with a blank NTFS partition
and tell it to install in just that partition, it will do so.
For example, before Win7 Home Premium installs, you could
feed it this, and point it at the empty partition. The
C: and \boot stuff ends up in the one-partition.

+-----+-----------------+--------------+
| MBR | | Empty NTFS |
+-----+-----------------+--------------+

Win10, on its first installation, may make yet another partition
which holds a WIM or ESD. That's a relatively small partition
as well.

But my suspicion is, whatever the problem, it's with
System Reserved.

I don't even know if moving C: up the disk a bit, so
System Reserved could be expanded, would make the installer
happy. Or you really would need to do the work for it.
Like, make it a tiny bit larger than it is now.

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved | C: partition |
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+

If you're a forensics expert, you could also
check the "fill" on System Reserved. The last time
I checked one here, maybe it said "84MB" worth of
files. Check to see if yours is perhaps almost
full, and that's what the installer is complaining
about. You may have initiated this, by an attempt
to assign a drive letter, like this... Don't make
it drive D: .

Boot flag 0x80
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+
| MBR | System Reserved D: | C: partition |
+-----+---------------------------+--------------+

Really, 500MB should be enough for just about
anything, assuming some space didn't get used in
there unintentionally.

On the Windows 7 system, you can turn System Restore
Off and On, to dump any restore points. That's
a quick way, for any partition currently having
SR running against it, to get the disk space back
from it. Having System Restore on at the time of installation,
may help with any backout the installer needs to do.
Maybe the installer turns it On anyway, if it's Off.

Paul

I looked at the destination drive and noticed some extra partitions so
I merged them and restored the MBR and all seems to be progressing fine
at this point of the first restart. Now I see a different screen (Black)
which tells me to "sit back and relax, have a beer and spark one"

I hope a spigot pops out of the screen
and starts pouring that frosty one for you.

It's a free upgrade after all.

Paul

Al Drake wrote:
On 7/31/2015 5:33 PM, . . .winston wrote:
Al Drake wrote on 07/31/2015 2:37 AM:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?


Windows 10 upgrade doesn't ask for a product key.
- enter of prior qualifying o/s product key is by design supposed to
fail.

To upgrade to Windows 10 use
- Windows Update
or
- MSFT Media Creation Tool

If the latter, when running the tool choose 'Upgrade Now' or the option
to create media (create the media, load the qualifying o/s and run
setup.exe on the media.)

Note: Ensure the port/device does not have a higher boot priority than
the hard drive. Win 10 upgrade restarts multiple times...the presence of
the media in the device if a higher boot priority than the location of
the os you are upgrading to Windows 10 will boot the media and run
setup.exe again, and again on each restart.

I had been running the setup file from within Windows 7 and continually
I was getting the same failed results until I altered the SSD by merging
some partitions. That resulted in a failure to boot into Win7 until I
used Macrium Reflect restore disk to rebuild the MBR.

Now it seems the install is going forward. The only ill report I
received was something about a need to install a language package later.
Somehow I must have selected something wrong when the ISO was created.


Like using the web link to the "en-GB" version of
MediaCreationTool, to download your "en-US" DVD ? :-)

Use the history on your browser, to figure out where
you've been...

Paul

Al Drake wrote on 07/31/2015 10:13 PM:
On 7/31/2015 5:33 PM, . . .winston wrote:
Al Drake wrote on 07/31/2015 2:37 AM:
I've been trying to get this thing going but the install just won't
accept my license Key. I've tried the one that Windows 7 uses for the
install, verified by SIW and one that is used on another system, both
are refused. I have several retail disks of Home Premium that I upgraded
with Instant Upgrade to Ultimate but no key will work. Has anyone
encountered this and know what to do? Instead of using the Win7 Ultimate
key should I try the Home Premium key and possibly not get the Windows
10 version I deserve? I burned an ISO file and selected Windows 10 Pro.
If I try the Home Premium Key will that get rejected if the ISO is for
Windows 10 Pro? Should I burn an ISO to match the Home Premium license
key. Is it worth all this trouble to begin with?


Windows 10 upgrade doesn't ask for a product key.
- enter of prior qualifying o/s product key is by design supposed to
fail.

To upgrade to Windows 10 use
- Windows Update
or
- MSFT Media Creation Tool

If the latter, when running the tool choose 'Upgrade Now' or the option
to create media (create the media, load the qualifying o/s and run
setup.exe on the media.)

Note: Ensure the port/device does not have a higher boot priority than
the hard drive. Win 10 upgrade restarts multiple times...the presence of
the media in the device if a higher boot priority than the location of
the os you are upgrading to Windows 10 will boot the media and run
setup.exe again, and again on each restart.

I had been running the setup file from within Windows 7 and
continually I was getting the same failed results until I altered the
SSD by merging some partitions. That resulted in a failure to boot into
Win7 until I used Macrium Reflect restore disk to rebuild the MBR.

Now it seems the install is going forward. The only ill report I
received was something about a need to install a language package later.
Somehow I must have selected something wrong when the ISO was created.


You might consider, if the current install fails...to start over and
obtain/verify the correct version of the the Media Creation Tool, create
the media anew, and then rerun setup.exe while within the qualifying o/s.

--
...winston
msft mvp windows experience