That was officially withdrawn at the end of 2017. since then the only official free upgrade offer from Microsoft was the one for those using assistive technologies. Now, the free upgrade offer officially ended on 29 July 2016. Both methods counted as taking an official 'free upgrade' and would be given a digital licence by Microsoft's activation servers. In the case of an OEM preinstalled Win7/8 that would be the CoA key. You could now go straight to a clean install and use the key from a qualifying system. The first was to upgrade an existing install of Win7/8. How to find your Windows 10 8.There were two ways to upgrade and get a digital licence. Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 8 and Windows 7. Keep in mind that this link only applies to: You can find more information from the Microsoft official website. Please note, you do NOT need a product key or serial number to install or use a driver disk or data recovery disk.

If you don't see a printed paer COA, and your operating system is NOT Windows 10, 8.1 or 8 then it's likely that Windows isn't properly licensed on that computer and it may even be counterfeit software. Sometimes for some older laptops the COA may be inside the battery compartment. Only use a product key finder if you have no other way to find it! Make sure you have the correct key as the embedded OEM product key number is the bulk OEM product key and will not active your new install. If you still want your actual serial number you can use a Windows BIOS product key finder to retrieve your product key. then you will not need to type in a Windows serial number to activate or install it, Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 will automatically retrieve it from the computer BIOS and active it. If your system was made by a large OEM manufacturer like Toshiba, Lenovo, Dell, Alienware etc. Using this new method the COA and product key will never get removed or destroyed and the product key will always be associated with the OEM system. The was done as many product keys were on paper or stickers on the COA and many got damaged lost or even stolen. This was achieved by embedding the product key into the computer's BIOS chips. With the launch of Windows® 8 on OctoMicrosoft introduced a new method of activating Windows. The Windows product key is normally the 25-character alphanumeric string printed on the COA. This sticker was known as the COA or Certificate of Authenticity. All computers that were supplied pre-installed with the Windows operating system before the release of Windows 8, were activated by a using the serial number found on a sticker that was attached to the computer.

Windows 10 pro oem coa sticker