A Little confused regarding Win 10 Install

G_Sup

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 31, 2005
Messages
300
Here's my situation: I have a machine with a retail version of Win 7 Pro 64bit... I have the retail install key along with the disk.

I am going to be doing a brand new build this week. I was under the impression that all I would need to do is download Win 10 onto a thumb drive and boot the new machine and install. After reading several posts it appears that I need to do a fresh install of Win 7 and then upgrade to 10???

Is there anyway to do a clean install of 10 on a brand new machine without installing 7 first?

Any help would be appreciated!
 
For the upgrade, yes need an activated windows 7/8/8.1 install first.

After the upgrade, you can reinstall windows 10 from scratch and will activate automatically. No need for key
 
The current free offer from Microsoft is for an upgrade to Windows 10 from a legit activated Windows 7/8/8.1 installation, that's it. So for you, planning to do a clean install of Windows 7 using the Product Key you have, the process goes like this:

1) Install Windows 7 clean and activate it with that Product Key you have. It'll need to be at least SP1 before the upgrade to Windows 10 can be completed (and it probably already is).

2) Once you've completed the Windows 7 installation, do the Windows 10 upgrade - it will not ask you for a Product Key since that's irrelevant now with the upgrade, the qualifying product is what works as proof.

3) Once Windows 10 is installed as an upgrade, open the System Properties and verify it shows as activated.

4) After that's happened and you have Windows 10 installed and activated, at any time from that point on you can wipe that machine and do a clean installation of Windows 10 itself, no upgrade required because you've already done that. During the clean installation process you will be asked for a Product Key twice - the first time you click the "Skip" button, the second time you click the "Do this later" link. When the clean install is completed and the machine is online once more, it will contact Microsoft and activate the Windows 10 installation without any further user intervention - no buttons to press, no manual activation, no slmgr.vbs Command Prompt scripts, nothing.

That's it. The hardware hash aka the hardware fingerprint generated during the upgrade installation is stored on Microsoft's servers and is used for activation on the same hardware from the upgrade install forward. Realistically once you switch over to Windows 10 you'll never have to bother with Product Keys ever again.

As for doing a straight pure clean installation of Windows 10 right now at this point in time as the only way to install it, that's not possible because the offer from Microsoft is as an upgrade initially after which you can clean install all you want. It takes a bit longer, yes, having to install the qualifying product and then doing the upgrade, give or or two maybe three hours at most, but once you've done that just one time you can clean install on the same hardware whenever you wish.
 
Thank you so much for the info guys! Tiberian, great write up... copied and saved.
 
As an additional note if you already have the Windows 7 with SP1 installed and activated you can skip to step 2, no need to reinstall 7.
 
Thank you so much for the info guys! Tiberian, great write up... copied and saved.
Be careful when following that advice.

Step 4 is creating problems for a number of us.

For a number of people, myself included, skipping using a Pro key during the clean install resulted in a Home installation.

I was able to resolve it through a series of manually editing the license and forcing Windows Update to perform an in-place upgrade to Pro.
 
And... you called Microsoft to get some help resolving all those problems you had, too. ;)
 
Be careful when following that advice.

Step 4 is creating problems for a number of us.

For a number of people, myself included, skipping using a Pro key during the clean install resulted in a Home installation.

I was able to resolve it through a series of manually editing the license and forcing Windows Update to perform an in-place upgrade to Pro.

So what is the best solution to step 4? Should I enter my Win 7 Pro key at that point?
 
So what is the best solution to step 4? Should I enter my Win 7 Pro key at that point?
Yes. Hopefully it will accept it. I skipped that step and had to do a bunch of manually fiddling.

It's true I called MS but they told me they couldn't help me after about 5 hours of being on hold, transferring to multiple tiers of support, and finally troubleshooting through RDP and concluded I would have to reinstall from 8.1
 
LOL, that was the quickest response I think I have ever gotten on any forum! Thanks for the head's up Mope!
 
Sorry to hijack but it is a related question. What if I want hardware upgrade? Do you have to reinstall windows 7 and upgrade to 10 so the hardware hash gets updated?
 
You never have to enter any Product Key to upgrade to Windows 10 as long as you're upgrading a legit activated qualifying product which means Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 and you never have to enter a Product Key when you clean install it either (because it requires you to upgrade it first to get it free).

That's the facts of the matter, period.
 
Thank you for the lightning response to my question.

You're welcome. Some people are bound to have issues with this upgrade situation regarding Windows 10 - I never ever recommend doing operating system upgrades, but that's just me. Unfortunately, this time out Microsoft decided they were going to force a complete operating system on the masses whether they like it or not if they want to get Windows 10 for free and at no monetary cost.

Just because it doesn't cost you any money out of pocket doesn't mean some folks won't still have to spend a lot of time and effort and frustration getting their upgrades to work, let alone the clean installations afterward.

Shit happens, sometimes more than it should, but that doesn't change the basic concept that the steps outlined in the second and third posts above aren't exactly how the process is designed to work and for the overwhelming majority of people so far (Microsoft claims over 90 million installations in the past 4 days) that's how it's working.
 
Thank you for the lightning response to my question.
Tiburian has been on a rampage from hell for the past few days going from thread to thread trying to undermine the responses I've given people to help them based on my own experiences getting my versions activated.

I called MS and they were unable to help and posted why they said they could not and the steps I took to get my installs activated. After a few days of Tiburian arguing that calling them is the way to go he posted this:
I just got off the phone with a Tier 3 support rep for Microsoft (an old friend of mine actually) and he said while things are different to a degree now, Microsoft isn't going to be complete hardasses about people having hardware failures which is what I've been saying all along. If you do eventually have a hardware failure of some kind and you have to build out basically a new machine to get up and running again - even if it's just the mobo that gets replaced - and you call in with your issues he stated that the first tier of tech support you reach is instructed to say "Start over again..." more often than not this is enough for customers to handle the issue on their end by reinstalling the OS they had used as the qualifying upgrade product (7, 8, or 8.1).

Notice that this is basically the opposite of what he linked you to.

Or, I guess you could argue, you are supposed to call MS but then they will tell you to reinstall 7 or 8.1 anyway so his response is not technically incorrect...but it's a waste of time :rolleyes:


So far, the quickest and easiest answer seems to be if you change hardware you need to install 7 or 8.1 again and reinstall 10 over that to get a valid hash.
 
Notice that this is basically the opposite of what he linked you to.

Really? Because it sure looks like exactly what I said and the FAQ states as well: if you change the hardware, you might need to contact Microsoft to get help with the activation. And you took my statement out of context and left out the relevant part which comes immediately after that part you quoted so here's the entire quote for clarity:

Tiberian said:
With respect to me saying Microsoft techs are/were wrong, I never said that, so don't put words in my mouth as the case happens to be. Regardless, I just got off the phone with a Tier 3 support rep for Microsoft (an old friend of mine actually) and he said while things are different to a degree now, Microsoft isn't going to be complete hardasses about people having hardware failures which is what I've been saying all along. If you do eventually have a hardware failure of some kind and you have to build out basically a new machine to get up and running again - even if it's just the mobo that gets replaced - and you call in with your issues he stated that the first tier of tech support you reach is instructed to say "Start over again..." more often than not this is enough for customers to handle the issue on their end by reinstalling the OS they had used as the qualifying upgrade product (7, 8, or 8.1).

If that doesn't work and the customer persists, it will escalate and then they will eventually be handled by someone that can do a reset on the activation for the license they used to do the upgrade - they don't get a Windows 10 activation reset because the license was an upgrade license to start with (which could then be used to clean install on the same hardware because the hash would be identical).

Don't quote me out of context, it doesn't help your case.

So far, the quickest and easiest answer seems to be if you change hardware you need to install 7 or 8.1 again and reinstall 10 over that to get a valid hash.

But after 30 days that won't be a possibility because the 7, 8, or 8.1 license will not be valid and won't activate because of the Windows 10 upgrade so... what then? Gonna roll those eyes back even further this time? ;)
 
Maybe MS will help you in the future, maybe they won't.

Right now you have to install 7 or 8.1 and then upgrade it to 10 if you do a hardware change.

There's nothing taken out of context. Even your full paragraph states "if that doesn't work" but it will work so the rest of paragraph is irrelevant to the issue at hand and the question as asked right now. It's also your buddy saying something to you over the phone and you relaying it back to the forums...

...well I called MS and got all the way up to T3 support and the final conclusion was to reinstall 8.1 and start over. Now, granted you weren't harassing me all over the forums so I didn't know to say, "Tiburian wrote on [H] that his buddy told him that if I persist enough you could manually activate my copy" so perhaps that's why I had to reinstall 8.1...or maybe the correct response is "if you change hardware you have to reinstall 7 or 8.1 and upgrade it to 10"
 
I had windows 8.1 pro upgraded it, and then I did a fresh install of win 10 pro on a usb drive.
I skipped both key entries and win 10 pro installed just fine.
 
I had windows 8.1 pro upgraded it, and then I did a fresh install of win 10 pro on a usb drive.
I skipped both key entries and win 10 pro installed just fine.
From the other thread Tiburian and I are active in there appears to be multiple ISO's available.

I downloaded mine while I was in OS X and, as a result, I downloaded a multi-version (Home and Pro) ISO. I was never presented with an option to select my version.

If someone downloads Windows 10 from a Windows machine, they'll be redirected to two separate links for either Home or Pro.

If you have one of those then it's not going to be an issue.
If you have a multi-version like mine, then it could potentially cause an issue.
 
There are basically 3 types of Windows 10 ISOs:

- the first is a dedicated edition ISO meaning it will only install Home or Pro, you are not given the option to choose the edition during the install process. This is the type of ISO you end up with if you use the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft - it asks you the language, the edition, and the architecture (32-bit or 64-bit or both in one) and then it downloads ESD files which get decrypted and converted into an ISO

- the second is the multi-edition ISO which can be acquired by visiting that Windows 10 link (the one for the Media Creation Tool) by using a browser on Linux or OSX - the ISO downloaded will either be the 32-bit or 64-bit version and it has both Home and Pro on it and you choose during the install process which one you want

- the third would be ISOs from MSDN which are basically the same things but they also include the Enterprise edition as well as the Educational editions - these require Product Keys to install because they are not eligible to be used as part of the Windows 10 free upgrade program

Now that those 3 types of ISOs are available, of course what you'll find on a lot of torrent and other such sites are ISOs that people are creating by combining the 3 types into one - right now there's some "ultra mega hella mega" Windows 10 ISO that claims to have all of them on the same piece of media: all the Home editions, the Pro editions, Enterprise edition, the Education editions, etc but I wouldn't trust a custom ISO from anybody except Microsoft directly, and even from Microsoft I always find an MD5 or SHA1 checksum to back it up and make sure it's the real deal before I'll use it.

Mind you as a I noted a few days ago in another post in another thread, if you use the Media Creation Tool to create an ISO or ISOs the checkums will never match what Microsoft is providing for direct ISOs because of timestamps and other files. I get why they chose to use the Media Creation Tool (the ESDs are compressed encrypted files and even smaller than the resulting ISOs so it's saving some bandwidth - not a great deal but it's some).

For example, the ESD for Windows 10 Pro x64 (filename is installx64.esd) is 2.61 GB (2,812,209,364 bytes) but when that ESD is converted to an ISO (filename is en_windows_10_pro_10240_x64_dvd.iso) it jumps to 3.71 GB (3,992,295,424 bytes) so that's a rather huge reduction in the resulting download requirement bandwidth.

Anyway, just tossing out some info for anyone that might care. ;)
 
Thanks for the input and clarification Mope. Appreciate all the responses as I'm sure it will help other's as well.
 
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