Reinstalling windows 10 that was upgraded from 7?

G

Gorilla

Supreme [H]ardness
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Sep 14, 2007
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So I'm going to be rebuilding my system next month. I will be moving over to an NVME drive and will be doing a fresh install.

My current system is windows 10 which was upgraded from a retail windows 7 ultimate.

So my question is, will this actually work? Do I grab a windows 10 ISO and use that to install? How do I activate without a windows 10 key?

Thoughts or suggestions?
 
It should activate fine on a fresh install. Get your 10 ISO on a USB, then reformat. Once it connects to the internet it will auto activate.
 
Might recommend retrieving your Windows 7 key before wiping, there is software to do this available. Also, make a backup.
 
you can feed it the same win7 key during setup and it will active too.
 
Just to clarify, I will be replacing everything except my gpu. How will it be able to activate?
 
Gorilla said:
Just to clarify, I will be replacing everything except my gpu. How will it be able to activate?
Click to expand...

it won't auto activate, you will need to try your old Win 7 key again and see if it will activate.
 
Gorilla said:
Just to clarify, I will be replacing everything except my gpu. How will it be able to activate?
Click to expand...

If it's retail, you may have to call the robot- if it were OEM, you'd technically be using a new system, and you'd need to purchase a new license.

You may run into some bumps, but you should be fine. I've done something similar with my desktop over the years.
 
Even if rebuilding your system you can keep windows 10 on the same drive without formatting or you can clone to your nvme drive even windows is far more versatile than it was years ago. You should be able to migrate over, if windows is tied to your Microsoft account it will make reactivation much easier.
 
Gorilla said:
Just to clarify, I will be replacing everything except my gpu. How will it be able to activate?
Click to expand...
If the motherboard is replaced, the system will not automatically reactivate. When you reinstall 10, input the Windows 7 product key during installation. Yes, it is that easy.
 
If you are using a Microsoft account to login, it will auto activate. The key is tied to your account and hardware id.
 
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