hi, wondering if M$ would allow this or would the older OEM OS product key be effectively cancelled? i would like to use something like BootItBareMetal to image and save my Win7 installation to another partition and then "upgrade" to Win10 and then be able to choose between them at startup. thoughts?
Or, that's the most logical answer. Your Windows KEY is for one product, and that product will be "turned" into another. You most likely won't be able to use the same KEY into two different systems because that OEM KEY will be assigned to the new Windows 10, and not your old Windows 7.
I responded somewhere here about this before...as I said then, unless they are willing to alter the systems bios and reflash it, they won't be able to stop you from restoring an OEM version of Windows 7. Each vendor had a key that was used for every PC (each version had a different key though they were always the same among version types, eg home, home premium, pro, ultimate) they shipped out (and it's not the same one on the sticker that they slapped on the side) so they CAN NOT convert then block those OEM keys or there would be hundreds of thousands of people with Windows 7 suddenly being non genuine simply because one person upgraded to 10 and the key was converted. On the other hand if you are using the number that's on the sticker (a previous re-install perhaps?) or using Win 8 OEM then the same will not hold true. If you're unsure, try a product key backup program and take a look at the actual serial it saves and see if it matches the ones found on wikipedia/google for your pc manufacturer
thx, i just want to use on the same (original) laptop. i guess BiBM can hide OSes from each other so i thought it might work. not sure if M$ would approve though. thanks for this. not sure i understand all of it, will have to re-read a few times. my netbook is a refurb and i think i used Produkey or something like that from Nirsoft and the Key# it reported did not match the sticker on the back. same thing with 2 other refurb netbooks i had fwiw.