I know there´s no need to rush getting Windows 10 as I should receive it for free in the future, at least according to what I´ve read.
However, information about the upgrade offer popping up in the taskbar tray icon area are showing up and I didn't get those yet.
I think I found the reason. My 3 PCs are members of a small private Active Directory, all are Windows 8 Pro, upgraded to Windows 8.1 and have genuine keys applied to them.
Opening the config in "C:\Windows\System32\GWX" shows, that the following value is set:
<EnableDomainJoined>false</EnableDomainJoined>
The file is write protected and can only be edited as an Administrator. Doing so and setting that value to true I am still not getting the icon.
I tried running the GWX executable before and after running the pre-defined scheduled tasks "Microsoft/Windows/Setup/gwx*".
There's another value, where the current phase is defined. I´ve set the following to "AnticipationUX" since for that phase "TrayIcon" is defined as true.
<Phase>None</Phase>
This didn't change anything either.
Does anyone know how to activate the upgrade offer on PCs that are members of a domain?
I don't want to take the PCs out of it just for this.
Best Answer
In your case, it seems there are only three machines and you're happy to temporarily change their domain status, which you've already tried to do by changing this setting:
But as you've found, this doesn't cause the upgrade offer to pop up in the system tray.
Instead, simply remove each machine from the domain, and re-add it to the domain once you've registered for your upgrade.
First check you have the relevant Windows Update installed (KB3035583) by typing the following at a command prompt:
You should see some output showing that you have KB3035583 installed:
If the command returns nothing, you don't have KB3035583 installed and until you do have it installed, there's no point proceeding with the rest of these steps.
Assuming you have KB3035583 installed, now remove your computer from the domain by putting it in a workgroup, and reboot. (Before removing it from the domain, remember to make sure you have the credentials of the local administrator, as you'll need able to log on to the local machine after the reboot.)
Directly on rebooting, the Windows 10 notification appears obligingly in the system tray:
Now you can click the notification and go through the dialogs...
...to reserve your upgrade.
Once you're done with the Windows 10 dialogs, re-join the computer to the domain.
EDIT for July 29: don't forget, all GWX does initially is the compatibility check on your computer. Regardless of whether you use GWX, you are still eligible for the free upgrade anytime during the first year per the MS terms. If you don't want to wait for the automatic phased download by GWX to complete (or the automatic download by Windows Update, for those who didn't run GWX or are no longer running it), you can download Windows 10 now: