I'm getting messages from Windows 7 saying my hard drive is failing. I've run chkdsk and a lot of issues were found. I've ordered a new HD.

My question concerns Windows 10. I upgraded this PC to W10 during the free period and then rolled back to W7. What can I do to insure that I can still go back to W10 in the future with this new HD, which will be cloned from my old, failing, HD?

Thanks.

Check out Microsoft's pages on this issue.

You can link your Win10 upgrade key to a Microsoft account, and then recover it on a new install. **BUT** You must have your Win10 patched to a certain version for this to work.

I did successfully transition my free upgrade Win10 to my current PC when I rebuilt last year. I cannot recall what steps I may have taken, outside of the above, however.

But he's rolled back to Win7.

Personally, I would use this event to start with a fresh Windows install, be it Win10 or Win7. If you do go to Win7, might be best to ring MS to make sure your keys are good. If you've upgraded to Win10 during the free upgrade period, they don't essentially give you a "key" like you would get if you bought a new version of Windows. I think they just confirm your Win7 is legit, take note of your hardware, and allow you to upgrade to Win10. Personally, if you install Win7 from your old install media and enter your usual key, I don't think a HDD change is enough to change the system enough that you'd get issues when you want to upgrade to Win10, but I could be wrong, hence ring MS to be sure.

Since the new year, I rolled 3 older model PCs back from Windows 10 to Windows 8 and Windows 7. I also clean installed Windows 7 on a New Ryzen 5 1600X that was already running Windows 10.

After the experiments were over, I left Windows 8 on one machine. I clean re-installed Windows 10 on the others (including the Ryzen 5).

All the Windows 10 clean re-installs went fine. I did NOT have to re-enter any keys. W10, when first installed and activated, apparently sends all your PC's component information to Microsoft. As soon as you reinstall W10 on that machine -- clean or from a system image -- it activates without you doing anything but connecting your PC to the internet. At least, that's the way it worked every time for me.

Using different hard drives and SSDs as the C: drive before and after rollbacks and during re-install did not eliminate my Key.

HOWEVER, I HAVE had issues (last year) when reinstalling W10 on a machine with a new motherboard (of the same type -- it replaced a defective MB). That cost me a W10 license. One must make sure one is registered with Microsoft and then un-register before changing the MB (or possibly CPU, I assume). There are instructions somewhere on the MS site. I read them too late.

I don't know what other parts may require preliminary actions -- but not one or two HDs, SSDs, or GPUs in my experience (but I have not experienced everything that might go wrong).

In many clean and system image re-installs during the last year, W10 was trouble free regarding re-installs on the "same" machine.

I'm no expert. So FWIW.

Edit: I also had W7 tell me I had a soon to be defective HD. It was old. I pitched it and used a new one. That did not seem to have any influence on anything. The new one ran fine on W7 and then on W10 when I re-installed.

As Allen notes, I've not read that a rollback invalidates the Win10 upgrade?



My experience was also somewhat the same. Apparently the license does (or at least *can*) get tied to your Microsoft sign-in account. The process seemed to require the Win10 install to be the correct version, and done as you say, with an un-registration on that hardware first, or something, before upgrading. What was annoying was that my searches to find the correct method seemed to pull up results at the Microsoft website which were sometimes unclear or could be read as almost contradictory.

In any case, my Win10 validated and has been working fine. I'd have preferred not having to spend 3 hours researching the process, in hopes to avoid losing a WIn10 key due to simple mistakes, but I suppose this is a cost of my free upgrade.

Thanks All!!