Windows 8.1 to Win10

Question

Hello, When I bought my Precision M6800 it came with Windows 8. About a year or so later I was offered the ability to upgrade this from the Dell 'My Products' portal. I've had to replace both HDs in the machine and have therefore built it back as Windows 8.1. Is there anyway I can get an upgrade from Dell to take this laptop back to Win10? Thanks

jphughan · Accepted Answer

@thedavegraygood to know you were running Win10 on that system at one point, but that wasn't entirely clear from your original post. You said the system came with Win8, then you said "About a year or so later I was offered the ability to upgrade this from the Dell "My Products" portal." You didn't actually say whether you took advantage of that upgrade. Not everyone who was offered a free upgrade to Win10 opted for it, after all, and if you did, it arguably would have been easier and clearer to say, "About a year or so later I upgraded to Windows 10 through an offer on the Dell "My Products" portal".

Anyhow, you can download Windows 10 directly from Microsoft here. The installer will include both Home and Pro, and if your motherboard doesn't have an embedded key (which it won't if it was a replacement), you'll be prompted to choose which edition to install. Simply choose Pro, and then as long as your previous Win10 Pro installation was activated at some point while your system had that replacement motherboard installed, it should activate again just fine.

jphughan · Answer

Take it 'back' to Win10? Based on your description it doesn’t sound like it was ever running Win10. But if you took advantage of the free upgrade to Win10 when it was available, then you can perform a clean install of Win10 and it will activate fine. No need to start with Win8/8.1, since your system would have a digital license for Win10 registered with Microsoft. If you never upgraded to Win10, then you MIGHT be able to activate Win10 after an upgrade. The free upgrade is officially over, but some have said it still works.

thedavegray · Answer

I can categorically state it was running Win10, from when the free upgrade was released until a week or so ago when I replaced the disks. I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion if I'm being honest. I don't have the original Win10 media as it was an in-place upgrade and the recovery USB I made at the time seems to be not bootable. I seem to recall the Dell engineer who replaced the motherboard saying that as the OS was tied to the motherboard I should be able to use any Win10 (pro) install kit and that it would validate via MS. That said, I can't see any Win10 download section and my service tag and express code are not recognised by the OS recovery tool, can't understand why these tags are not recognised as they are lifted straight off the 'My Products' page of the Dell portal.

jphughan · Answer

Glad it worked. Keys are never embedded into or otherwise associated with replacement motherboards, and if you did the free upgrade, you never had a true Win10 key to begin with, even on your original motherboard. If you go to Settings > Update & Security > Activation, chances are Windows will say you’re activated with a digital license. Everyone who upgraded during the free period got activated that way, and it basically means that Microsoft stores a hardware fingerprint of your system and knows that it’s entitled to a Windows 10 license — hence no need for a key. Typically this works even if some hardware has changed, although changing a lot of stuff may be an issue. Anyhow, the digital license also means you even do clean install of Win10 going forward and it will still reactivate, no need to start with 8.1. I greatly prefer clean installs to in-place upgrades myself, and if you haven’t invested a lot of time yet in your new build, I’d personally start over.

And if you linked your Windows account to your Microsoft account, your license would be linked to that account (and that should be mentioned in the Activation section of the Settings app), which makes it easier to move that license to other systems or get reactivated after significant hardware changes. But you have to be ok linking your Microsoft account, which I prefer to avoid.

thedavegray · Answer

Thanks, that worked just fine by doing an in-place upgrade. The key must embedded or maybe the Dell engineer associated it with the new motherboard, because Win10 installed without prompting. Computer properties shows the key and no mention of trial edition.

Thanks.

speedstep · Answer

Windows 8 and up machines have SLP 2.0 key in bios.

Inspiron

Windows 8.1 to Win10

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