Win 10 free to Win 8 and 7 users

OMA, I read that entire thread, not sure what the real MS policy is. From what I can glean Win 10 is tied to a motherboard.
This is my third motherboard with this Win 7 installation. I would hate to waste $100 each time I wanted to test a different motherboard. Usually I can just image the drive, swap the motherboard and play with the drivers to get things running again.

 

DOA, if any questions you have, Windows 10 support forum will address that as much as they can. Here's a link that answers many questions for you that arise. http://www.tenforums.com/windows-10...10-will-support-unlimited-clean-installs.html

 

Windows has never been licensed in such a way that swapping major hardware has been allowed. I'm not sure if its confirmed but there was a rumor that swapping 60%+ of hardware would deactivate you without qualification to be reactivated. The motherboard is 60+.

That's not to say you don't get several activation attempts. Eventually your luck wears out though. In the beginning, WPA servers were purged every 120 days. I doubt that is still the case.

 

Thanks Adry. That explains the forum complaints at Asus that their Windows gets unauthorized if they RMA their motherboard. I have never run into this, but we have a volume license.

 

Ditto. I haven't purchased Windows in forever and I use a MAK version of 8.1 Enterprise now with Windows 10 at home. I'm hoping MSDN sees it before GA.

 

The swap of the motherboard is not an issue if you had bought retail and not OEM. I always have bought retails and haven't had an issue upgrading from computer to computer.

 

Why is it idiotic?

There is no better way to win people over than to give them services they enjoy. Plus it ticks off Apple and Google.

 

If nothing else Cortana will know what you like and do. That is worth $$.

Question for Win 8 users, have you tried adding 4+ TB drives? Does Win8 have the Win7 problems with defaulting to 32 bit drivers? I know BIOS settings and non MS drivers are part of the problem, just asking if anyone has done it.

 

I know adding a 6TB drive is simple on Win 10, provided you have an Intel chipset and install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver first. I have only tested that one hardware and software combination, but it's plug and play.
Next time I put in Win 10 I will just plug in the storage drive without the Intel driver. I will not be testing 8 as my company is skipping that revision.

 

I have added an 4TB on my newly build pc along with another 3TB. Did not have to break a sweat to do it.

 

Sorry, very long text about a mistake IBM made on PS/2 below, which I owned one as a child. I don´t know if any of you guys remember this.
I believe that any trying to monopolize the market sometimes get backfired, like IBM. There are other ways to Microsoft win revenue, market share or whatever they are after with this offer.


IBM was indeed very late to put to action its pro-active idea of counter-attacking its competitors. IBM’s break-through concept of bringing a computer to every office desk in the world worked very well until competitors like Compaq and others began to hit back during the era of the 3rd generation of the PC market. What the competitors did was they started to fabricate a PC clone of IBM and started to eat away IBM’s PC sales whose prices were, as per business consumers, pretty high and hence they did not mind buying working PCs without the IBM logo on them.

In order to get back into the PC marker groove, IBM gave birth to a new idea and named it PS/2 which was supposedly ‘a completely new PC with a closed micro channel architecture that would force the cloners to start again from scratch’. This could have been fantastic, considering competition would suffer till the time they found a new way to hit back. But the worst part of the entire scenario was that even consumers would have to start from the scratch in terms of getting compatible with the new system. IBM thought that they had enough influence that can pull this idea off. But they were wrong. Another basic mistake that IBM made was the non-realization of the fact that the time for earning more margins on hardware products was long gone and now software is where the real money lies.

 

By this I think you mean you had a Windows 8.1 install and then added two HDD. The 4TB and 3TB were both fully recognized with no driver updates or other issues - plug and play.