Upgraded from win7 ultimate to win10 a few months ago, installing a new SSD tomorrow.

As the title says, I did the free upgrade from windows 7 ultimate to windows 10 a few months ago on my gaming/desktop rig and shit has worked quite well. I was surprised to see a lot of win7 features carry over that aren't available in win10 such as image backups, sticky notes, and a few others..

Tomorrow I'm picking up a new SSD for the OS and I'd like to do a clean install of windows 10 while maintaining the win 7 ultimate features I currently have. What is my best course of action?

Download the media creation tool, and either burn a DVD or create a bootable flash drive. Reboot to which media you created and perform clean install.

If I remember correctly, you don't have to put in a key because the MS server should automatically recognize your system from the upgrade and activate for you.

Thats right. The key is your hardware. It should all go fine as done this myself

It *should* go okay this way.

I did not have the same experience. I had a specialized Win7 install with an SSD config. I had moved my appdata to a secondary spinner to save space on the SSD. Well - 10 didn't have any idea WHAT to do with that so my initial upgrade install was borked. I tried to do a clean install after and it would not fly.

So I think the key thing to note in this case is - IF - your upgrade install goes as planned - meaning without issue - and - IF - Microsoft is able to ACTIVATE your install, THEN your clean install should go fine. If any part of that is off - then ALL bets are off too.

So far i have upgraded around 8 PCs with different hardware and re upgrades and all went fine

I've upgraded 3 boxes so far and of the 3 - ONE went as expected. The other two had the special config I noted earlier - and had to had to have varying levels of intervention in order to straighten out.

I was eventually able to get all 3 working, but for me only 1 was without issue.

TourGuide said:

I've upgraded 3 boxes so far and of the 3 - ONE went as expected. The other two had the special config I noted earlier - and had to had to have varying levels of intervention in order to straighten out.

I was eventually able to get all 3 working, but for me only 1 was without issue.

Click to expand...

Well, considering the appdata folder is not designed to be moved, that does not surprise me at all. Do you only have a 64GB SSD?

Yeah - I realize the issue was of my making - mostly.

The two trouble drives were a 512 and a 1 TB. I was playing it safe with space - plus I overprovision 30% for reliability sake.

What I was most unhappy about was that when I did a clean install my old 7 key (at that time) would not activate Windows 10. MS support was no help at all.

People with special configs need to be aware of the limitations of the Windows 10 installer.

When I built my current system my SSD wasn't in yet. I built it and did the 8->10 upgrade with the hard drive. When the SSD came in I just installed that and reinstalled 10 and skipped the product key screen. It activated just fine.

Changing the hard drive is not a big enough change to lose your digital licensing.

Yea, you need to skip it when it asks for product key on the 2 occasions during install