How to retrieve your Win10 key.

[Corky34]

spoke to technical, the key is saves on the activation server alongside a list of your hardware serial numbers, if you change a few components and reinstall win 10, skipping the licence keys, it will still activate.
apparently if you change your motherboard and processor but keep the rest of your hardware the same, it should also still activate (though this is less likely, and may require a phone call to M$

So does that mean if someone takes advantage of the "free" upgrade on a retail version of 7/8 and then needs to re-activate after the first years "free" upgrade that their going to need to purchase a new windows 10 upgrade license? If so that seems to be counter to Microsoft's statement that an upgraded retail license remains a retail license, it seems you lose the ability to transfer the upgraded license.

[GuidoLS]

So does that mean if someone takes advantage of the "free" upgrade on a retail version of 7/8 and then needs to re-activate after the first years "free" upgrade that their going to need to purchase a new windows 10 upgrade license? If so that seems to be counter to Microsoft's statement that an upgraded retail license remains a retail license, it seems you lose the ability to transfer the upgraded license.

Yes no maybe. The upgrade doesn't work the way a retail setup does. If you want to move a retail key derived from 7 or 8.1 before the year is up, you have to re-install the original os on another machine, and then upgrade to 10 again, which will de-activate the original machine. Since a year hasn't come up yet, there's no way of actually knowing what will happen re: re-activating, although everything I've read so far indicates that you can clean install 10 on an already activated machine after a year is up.

So far, I've not been able to get an official response as to what the future is with Win 7 or 8.1 retail keys upgraded to Win 10 are. OEM keys remain just that, under the same license.

[Corky34]

Yea I/we know how reinstalling on the same hardware after the "free" years upgrade offer is handled, and that OEM isn't covered, etc,etc.

The specific question Microsoft seem to be refusing to answer is what happens when you want to re-activate your upgraded 7/8 license on new hardware past the "free" upgrade offer, AFAIK they've said an upgraded 7/8 license remains the same, an OEM license remains OEM, and retail remains retail, but it seems Microsoft are being purposefully duplicitous as the terms state under certain circumstances a license can be transferred yet there's noway to do that past the "free" upgrade offer (yet).

TBH these are they sort of question people really should have had answers to before Windows 10 was released, to not do so makes it seem like they're being purposefully deceitful (IMHO).