I bought my machine from my employer with WIndows 7 installed (enterprise i believe it was). Microsoft then offered a free upgrade to Windows 10 for free and that offer lasted for a certain time period. The upgrade itself was permanent. I did the upgrade and as the installation was free I didn't have a product key to provide as such. Now my windows decided to do a Windows Update and the next time I started it up I got the error: "No bootable devices found". I went to bios settings, did a health test, came up 100% healthy. Opened the machine and re-connected the cables and everything. Tried to start it up. Didn't work. Went back into bios to change to legacy boot, dragged the os drive to the top of the list. Didn't work. I then created a bootable usb. That too didnt work. I then decided to take the machine to a professional. They called me a few days after dropoff and said I might have to buy a windows 10 to get it installed on there. I debated with them for a bit and they said they could try to install the windows 7 that the machine came with and hopefully that can get activated automatically. I then asked why it is impossible to install an un-activated version of Win 10 and then calling up microsoft to verify that I did indeed have an activated Win 10 version on the machine and therefore get my/an activation key? The guy argued his way out of that one pretty much saying that was not possible.
My question therefore is, is it not possible to get Win 10 installed in the machine without purchase, and then I can do the activation myself, whether by calling up microsoft to re-activate it for me, or by buying a new product key?
