Work Around for Installing Windows 8 Twice

[BognerPRS]

I have a copy of windows 8 on my pc now that I upgraded to 10 a while ago. Can I take this install disk and put windows 8 on my laptop?

I was just curious because I know you can only use the disk for 8 on one pc at a time but since I upgraded to windows 10..... does that old install of 8 still count? Thanks

 

[Corwin65]

No.

The license you had with 8 was converted to 10.

You no longer have a license for 8.

 

[BognerPRS]

No.

The license you had with 8 was converted to 10.

You no longer have a license for 8.

Thanks for the quick response. So that means I can reinstall windows 8 only on the original machine? You know, in case something gets messed up and I need a clean instal

 

[Eximo]

No you can re-install Windows 10 on whichever machine is running now. It should recognize the hardware. If you make significant changes to the system and don't register using your e-mail address you can also lose the license that way.

 

[BognerPRS]

No you can re-install Windows 10 on whichever machine is running now. It should recognize the hardware. If you make significant changes to the system and don't register using your e-mail address you can also lose the license that way.

Thanks for the response. Im'm not sure what you mean by register with my email address. Can you go into a little more detail please? I'd hate to lose my code, these things aren't cheap!

 

[Corwin65]

Your license is tied to your login on Windows 10. You no longer have a license for 8.

 

[Eximo]

It can be tied to your login. If you upgraded from a local account or implicitly used a local account there is no association between you and your license. Only the hardware and the license.

Under Control Panel -> Users -> Manage accounts you can change your login type to an e-mail address. This comes with its own headaches of making sure that all of your files aren't being backed up to One-Drive. It has its convenience factors, but I would rather they hadn't implemented this. Some sort of other two factor authentication would be better.

 

[BognerPRS]

Your license is tied to your login on Windows 10. You no longer have a license for 8.

But I just reinstalled windows 8 so I must still have the license. Do you have a source for that?

 

[USAFRet]

Your license is tied to your login on Windows 10. You no longer have a license for 8.

But I just reinstalled windows 8 so I must still have the license. Do you have a source for that?

Your Win 8 (or 8.1?) will unactivate itself.
Upgrading to Win 10 does not generate a whole second OS license.
One or the other. And almost certainly, Win 10 only.