Question : What happens when Windows 10 is not activated?

[bmac89]

It is possible that your preview version has already expired. I just performed the operation again on another machine this morning with my preview version, and it installed just fine, and I activated it, and then updated it, and then installed the final version of Windows 10 Pro over it as an upgrade and successfully activated the final version as well.

So, it's possible that your preview version is too old, though it should work if it is still prior to it's expiration date. But, maybe you need to try another unlock key? The key I'm using starts with 6P99N

I'll be doing a separate write up here in a few minutes of my latest install, as I think it might be of interest to the Mac community. I've got Windows 10 Pro Final 64-BIT installed "natively" on a 2006 Mac Pro 2.66 GHz system without any boot loader, bootcamp, or virtualization going on. No fancy EFI work arounds, nothing. Just boot straight into it.

Thanks for the helpful reply. I'm wondering whether the wintousb install has something to do with it. I used VHD method.
I will give bootcamp another try.

So when you tried again this morning did you have a tab "preview builds" in the settings > update & recovery
to update build versions, or was there only a windows update section?

I wonder whether the build 9926 is newer than 10041 or just a different version of the OS?

Thanks again!

 

[flyinmac]

Thanks for the helpful reply. I'm wondering whether the wintousb install has something to do with it. I used VHD method.
I will give bootcamp another try.

So when you tried again this morning did you have a tab "preview builds" in the settings > update & recovery
to update build versions, or was there only a windows update section?

I wonder whether the build 9926 is newer than 10041 or just a different version of the OS?

Thanks again!

Hi,

Yes, I had the preview builds option in there. I told it to give them to me "Fast" and then proceeded with updating.

Don't know which version is newer. All I know is it seems to be working for me. Wish there was a way to help you out better.

 

[bmac89]

Hi,

Yes, I had the preview builds option in there. I told it to give them to me "Fast" and then proceeded with updating.

Don't know which version is newer. All I know is it seems to be working for me. Wish there was a way to help you out better.

I have now got bootcamp working and have installed build 10041 that way. I tried a different product key from the original and it sucesfully activated. It is in the process of downloading windows update. Like last time, the Download keeps restarting at 0% so who knows what is going on but hopefully it will eventually do its thing!

However I still don't see any 'Preview Build' tab in settings > update & recovery. My understanding is that this should be below 'Windows Update' and above 'Backup'. Without this I don't think I can update the build version.
I have set fast update under "Advanced Options."

Screenshot below:



To double clariffy - you are saying that your windows installs showed "preview build" tab between the 'Windows Update' & 'Backup' tabs?

Thanks!

 

[flyinmac]

I have now got bootcamp working and have installed build 10041 that way. I tried a different product key from the original and it sucesfully activated. It is in the process of downloading windows update. Like last time, the Download keeps restarting at 0% so who knows what is going on but hopefully it will eventually do its thing!

However I still don't see any 'Preview Build' tab in settings > update & recovery. My understanding is that this should be below 'Windows Update' and above 'Backup'. Without this I don't think I can update the build version.
I have set fast update under "Advanced Options."

Screenshot below:

View attachment 573184

To double clariffy - you are saying that your windows installs showed "preview build" tab between the 'Windows Update' & 'Backup' tabs?

Thanks!

I think the preview build update speed option was under the advanced button if I remember correctly

But, if it's activated, then you can try the update to full Windows 10 and see what happens.

 

[bmac89]

I think the preview build update speed option was under the advanced button if I remember correctly

But, if it's activated, then you can try the update to full Windows 10 and see what happens.

How? There is no option available and no icon in the navigation/taskbar.

 

[flyinmac]

How? There is no option available and no icon in the navigation/taskbar.

Once the Technical Preview is activated, you can then go to the Microsoft Windows 10 update website and download the utility that will update your computer to Windows 10 Final.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

From the drop down list, choose "Windows 10" the others are reduced versions.

Run the utility that is downloaded from that link, and then choose from the options it presents to "Upgrade this PC".

That should update you to Windows 10 Pro.

Then, after you have the final version of Windows 10 Pro installed, go to System, then "About" and see if you're Activated. If not, you can activate it from there. You can also go into "Updates" and you'll see an "activate" tab there. Click that tab and see if it's activated, if not, go ahead and activate it.

It should work.

Let me know.

 

[bmac89]

Once the Technical Preview is activated, you can then go to the Microsoft Windows 10 update website and download the utility that will update your computer to Windows 10 Final.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

From the drop down list, choose "Windows 10" the others are reduced versions.

Run the utility that is downloaded from that link, and then choose from the options it presents to "Upgrade this PC".

That should update you to Windows 10 Pro.

Then, after you have the final version of Windows 10 Pro installed, go to System, then "About" and see if you're Activated. If not, you can activate it from there. You can also go into "Updates" and you'll see an "activate" tab there. Click that tab and see if it's activated, if not, go ahead and activate it.

It should work.

Let me know.

Thanks a lot for all your help - I will let you know how it goes.

Just wondering - If I were to format the hard drive and do a clean install down the track (say 6-12 months later) I wonder whether it would still activate the windows 10 final release.... as the product key used was for tech preview?

 

[bmac89]

Once the Technical Preview is activated, you can then go to the Microsoft Windows 10 update website and download the utility that will update your computer to Windows 10 Final.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

From the drop down list, choose "Windows 10" the others are reduced versions.

Run the utility that is downloaded from that link, and then choose from the options it presents to "Upgrade this PC".

That should update you to Windows 10 Pro.

Then, after you have the final version of Windows 10 Pro installed, go to System, then "About" and see if you're Activated. If not, you can activate it from there. You can also go into "Updates" and you'll see an "activate" tab there. Click that tab and see if it's activated, if not, go ahead and activate it.

It should work.

Let me know.

I have successfully updated to Windows 10 Pro and it remains activated. Thankyou for your ongoing help - I much appreciate it!

I'm wondering, what happens if I want to do a clean install in the future (say in 6-12 months). How do I re-activate my Windows 10, as the product key I used was the Tech Preview key? Or do I lose the privilege if I format the hard drive?

Thanks!

 

[flyinmac]

I have successfully updated to Windows 10 Pro and it remains activated. Thankyou for your ongoing help - I much appreciate it!

I'm wondering, what happens if I want to do a clean install in the future (say in 6-12 months). How do I re-activate my Windows 10, as the product key I used was the Tech Preview key? Or do I lose the privilege if I format the hard drive?

Thanks!

I'm glad you got it installed and activated.

According to Microsoft, once Windows 10 has been installed on that machine and activated, it should remain eligible to run windows 10.

Whether Microsoft is tying the machines MAC address to a database or not, I don't know. (The MAC address is a unique identifier for every device with an Ethernet port / connection).

So, I don't know how they handle re activation. All I can imagine is that the machines configuration and MAC address are in a database with your name.

That's a question Microsoft hasn't seemed to answer yet.

 

[bmac89]

I'm glad you got it installed and activated.

According to Microsoft, once Windows 10 has been installed on that machine and activated, it should remain eligible to run windows 10.

Whether Microsoft is tying the machines MAC address to a database or not, I don't know. (The MAC address is a unique identifier for every device with an Ethernet port / connection).

So, I don't know how they handle re activation. All I can imagine is that the machines configuration and MAC address are in a database with your name.

That's a question Microsoft hasn't seemed to answer yet.

Hmmm... well I hope that is the case and we don't find out we've been left out in the cold!

P.S. Strangely bootcamp has messed up my OSX - but that is for another thread.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/bootcamp-messed-up-osx.1905659/

 

[bmac89]

Sorry to ask so many questions. Seeing as I am very low on disk space on my imac - I'm wondering whether it would work to clone my bootcamp partition onto an external hard drive, re-size the partition on the external drive and boot off there. Do you know if this would work or the best way to go about doing this? Or would this break the activation or boot-up.

Thanks!

 

[flyinmac]

I'll take a look at your other thread.

Honestly, I don't know about the cloning and moving boot camp. The Mac I have, requires boot camp partitions to be on internal drives. But the way I circumvented it would get me around that.

In theory, if you setup an external drive and configured it properly so that the Mac could boot from it. Used the guid partition scheme, and the formatted it as NTFS and copied your windows installation to it, then I believe it would work.

Another option is to clone your is x installation to an external drive and then once you verify that it's bootable, use boot camp to resize your windows partition.

Cloning os x is easy. Pretty much like just copying all folders and files from the root folder (naturally including their contents).

Windows required some trickery or utilities to clone. But it's possible.

There's utilities for os x as well.

I don't think cloning windows to an external drive would break activation. Windows does watch for hardware changes. But usually it's watching for new main boards, new CPUs, and new network adapters.

Hard drives don't usually trigger.