Can I get windows 10 back on laptop again without buying it?

[wahoospa]

A friend brought me his Asus X53E laptop because his machine kept freezing when the desktop icons first appeared and sometimes would freeze much sooner than that and would boot no further. He originally had Windows 7 Home Premium on it and updated the machine to Windows 10 a fews month ago. He doesn't use the machine very much as he travels a lot. It seemed it was either the hard drive bad or the motherboard had a problem. I tried everything I knew and came up with no fix. I told him I thought is was the hard drive. Since I could get nowhere he gave me the OK to erase the hard drive and put Windows 7 back on. I did that and Windows 7 worked for great for about 5 hours and started doing as Windows 10 did. I decided to take the laptop apart to see if something obvious. There was, one of the wireless wires was disconnected but I knew this  could not cause the problems. Raising the motherboard out I saw the problem. The fan connection was not plugged into the motherboard. I knew at this point the machine had to be running hot and trying to shut down and was the cause of all his problems. I called him and asked if anyone had worked on this machine before assuming this was a new machine since he had it. He told me he sent the machine back to ASUS, (having purchased an extended warrenty when new) some months ago because the motherboard had gone bad. Whoever replaced the motherboard at Asus (or their authorized repair shop) left all those connections disconnected. Everything is now fine with the machine with Windows 7 on it. Is there a way to get his machine back to Windows 10 without having to purchase it from a store? If not he says he can get by with Windows 7. I just hate to see him have to purchase Windows 10.

[FloatingFatMan]

Windows 10 is registered to the Microsoft Account it was installed with, so yes, he can.

[+Warwagon MVC]

5 hours ago, FloatingFatMan said:

Windows 10 is registered to the Microsoft Account it was installed with, so yes, he can.

It's activated with the hardware configuration not the Microsoft Account.

[FunkyMike]

5 hours ago, wahoospa said:

A friend brought me his Asus X53E laptop because his machine kept freezing when the desktop icons first appeared and sometimes would freeze much sooner than that and would boot no further. He originally had Windows 7 Home Premium on it and updated the machine to Windows 10 a fews month ago. He doesn't use the machine very much as he travels a lot. It seemed it was either the hard drive bad or the motherboard had a problem. I tried everything I knew and came up with no fix. I told him I thought is was the hard drive. Since I could get nowhere he gave me the OK to erase the hard drive and put Windows 7 back on. I did that and Windows 7 worked for great for about 5 hours and started doing as Windows 10 did. I decided to take the laptop apart to see if something obvious. There was, one of the wireless wires was disconnected but I knew this  could not cause the problems. Raising the motherboard out I saw the problem. The fan connection was not plugged into the motherboard. I knew at this point the machine had to be running hot and trying to shut down and was the cause of all his problems. I called him and asked if anyone had worked on this machine before assuming this was a new machine since he had it. He told me he sent the machine back to ASUS, (having purchased an extended warrenty when new) some months ago because the motherboard had gone bad. Whoever replaced the motherboard at Asus (or their authorized repair shop) left all those connections disconnected. Everything is now fine with the machine with Windows 7 on it. Is there a way to get his machine back to Windows 10 without having to purchase it from a store? If not he says he can get by with Windows 7. I just hate to see him have to purchase Windows 10.

I would send the machine back to ASUS. Who knows how much degradation the dGPU has experienced whilst the fan wasn't plugged in.

[PGHammer]

2 minutes ago, warwagon said:

It's activated with the hardware configuration not the Microsoft Account.

However, the registration is tied to the account - not the hardware.

For Insiders (for example) you have as many licenses as you have hardware devices in the program (in my own case, I have one desktop and three notebooks in the program).  If a device falls down (failure, breakage, etc.), I can replace it (or. if the device is repaired, upgrade or reinstall, whichever is needed) - the license does not die until the device itself permanently dies.

 

The three notebooks did NOT come into the program from Windows 7 - in fact, only one of the notebooks ever ran 7 (and that was because it shipped with it); the others came from Vista (and XP) respectively and (as a result) were clean-installed with their builds of 10.  The ex-Vista notebook needs a new power brick and has (as a result) not gotten the Anniversary Update yet.