Windows 10 Clean Install Activation

Jesusfrk611

Fully Optimized
Messages
2,193
Location
US
If you install Windows 10 over top of 7 or 8.1. Great. You don't have to worry about activation and it does everything for you assuming you never do an OS reinstall or your drive never fails for the life of that PC. I don't like doing OS upgrades and would rather a fresh install. Installing Win 7/8.1 with a fresh install and then upgrading should get you a similarly activated Windows 10 with about as fresh as you can get it and still have it activate. However I tried to do a fresh install on a computer that had already done the upgrade from Windows 7. At first I thought from what I read that MS logged the motherboard info so you could activate without a product key so I went ahead and did a fresh install and tried to activate it but it needed a key. So I pulled the product key I got off the old install with ProduKey. Tried that key and it wouldn't work. Said key is not valid. So Microsoft is just making things much more difficult for us if you ever want or need to do a reinstall. The thing is it's only a free upgrade for a year. So after this year will we even be able to do a Windows 7 install and then do the upgrade to get it activated? I am in the process of testing my theory that a fresh install of 7 upgraded to 10 will work the same. I don't know if they deactivate the Windows 7 key once you install 10 or what...

Anyone have any actual answers on this? I work at a computer repair shop and we've already run into our share of Windows 8 activation problems. I hate having to guess if the computer in question started with 8 or 8.1 because you have to install the correct version for it to activate and upgrade to 8.1 if it's just 8 which is just an excellent waste of time. I miss the days of Windows 7 keys on the side of the computer so you can use a Win 7 SP1 DVD and use the key regardless if the computer came without a service pack.
 
Hi I can only tell you my experience. I did the up grade to W10. I then checked speecy and I had a different Key with W10. I then created a image of my C drive with W10 on it. Before doing the up grade I had created a image with W7 on it. I used the W7 image to restore back to W7. I also created a USB and a DVD of W10. I also created a image of W10 before restoring back to W7. I'm paranoid and I try to have as many ways to stay ahead of MS as I can. Not sure what problems I'll run into if I decide to restore back to W10. Surely I can get W10 back one way or another. If I can't, I really don't see that I'm losing as I really like W7 and bt 2020 I'm going to ned a new rig any way and I'm sure it will have a debugged W10 on it.
LOL!
Gary!!
 
The problem with that is that I can't have any way of telling every potential customer that will come into the shop I work at to do an image of their drive so that we can keep activation... And the fact that we have to figure ways around activation on a legitimate copy is absolutely ridiculous.
 
Hi I know, but wouldn't it be great if every computer user created regular back up images. As I said. I can only tell you how I approach this W10 Ordeal! I'm thinking that MS is giving you a new Key with this up grade or install; that should be good, but I can't guarantee that.
Gary!
 
I also noticed the key in speccy different from my W7 key so I wrote it on the DVD with the W10 on it. :)
 
Back
Top Bottom