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In basic terms, It is the manual way of doing the same thing that an in-place upgrade from 7 to 10 does. It lets you upgrade by clean install without having to key in the Win 7 COA key. It can also be a blessing when the COA on a machine is unreadable. It works as long as the installed Win 7 is activated and legit.
I don’t follow what you are asking here.
Where have you been?
Even though it activated without a "key" just means it once was once upgraded to 10 in the last 4 years so it was already activated at one time.
Are you saying 10 yr old computers or 10 yr old children?
In my experience, that's only if the system has previously had Windows 8 or 10 installed and activated. It doesn't have to be recently (it may have been downgraded to 7 when new, for example), just at some point in its history. And Windows 10 will still install and work if you click on "I don't have a key", even if the machine has not been previously licenced for 8/10; it just won't activate. I often install Windows 10 unlicensed (temporarily) for compatibility and testing purposes. As far as I can tell, the only limitation prior to activation is that desktop customisations and themes are disabled.
Exactly, I just did one that never had 10 and I had to use the COA to activate.
Most of these computers never saw Windows 7 let alone Windows 10
