Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I've seen an ebay seller selling the bottom base of t420 with the coa label on it. I was wondering if this can be legitimately used on my x301 or x61, to be upgraded to windows 10?

Cheers,

Legal it is not quite.
Doable? Yes, even without COA.
However, to get the free W10 (until July 29, 2016), you first have to install W7 (preferably W7 Pro) on each machine and activate it, then upgrade.
Any machine with Slic2.1 in BIOS should automatically activate Vista and/or W7 when using Lenovo Recovery disks.
For X61, install Middleton's BIOS: http://ali.dj/blog/sata-ii-support-for- ... 61-x61-r61
For X301, see this: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... ad/page420
Can't discuss this any further.

Ways to work around

Since the Windows 10 1511 release from last fall, you just have to enter the product key on the COA to activate Windows 10. Installing Windows 7 is not necessary. That being said, one thing I'm not sure about is whether that product key can be used for Windows 7 afterwards. I would guess not and would use it for Windows 7 before Windows 10. The COA will work on both OSes as long as nobody has used it before. I used the COA on my X201 to activate VMs for both Windows 7 and 10.

Upgrading a SLIC table activated OEM install of Windows 7 will also work and the COA product key will still be available. One of the nice things about buying used Thinkpads is that you usually get a product key that can still be used to activate a copy of Windows. Not totally legal according to the EULA but it always works. In the case of putting a VM in the original machine and using the Windows product key to activate it, that is legal as far as I know because the OEM license is tied to the hardware and that applies to a VM in that hardware.