Win 10 clean install question

[kajson]

Hello everyone,

my brother in law has bought a new computer yesterday still with win 8.1 on it, which he'll be upgrading to windows 10. I'm guessing non pro edition. So far I've determined that if you want to do a clean install after the upgrade you don't use an updated productkey, rather microsoft registers somehow your hardware id and auto activates.

Now here's my worry, the computer isn't coming with an ssd, and I'm building that in tommorow, and I want to do the clean install on the ssd understandably.
My question is, will this alter the hardware ID in such a way that Win 10 won't activate anymore. I know there's a 30 day grace period to fix things, but I'd rather get everything right straight away.
I'm also wondering if I can just format the former system drive after win 10 has been activated on the SSD or if this will screw up some activation logging file or whatever other important stuff they've somehow left on the older installation.

If it doesnt activate it would mean I'd have to get into contact with microsofts help desk, which I reckon will be extremely hard to reach anyways, and my experience with them hasn't been great sofar.


Thanks in advance for any light shed on the matter. I'm sure more people are debating a form of this conundrum.

 

[LightningJR]

I was talking to a buddy of mine yesterday who was on the phone with Microsoft asking them a bunch of these questions. He could not get any concrete answers to this, it seems MS support isn't fully up to speed on Windows 10 as of yet.

If I were to make an educated guess I would say that a HDD swap/change is the absolute FIRST thing MS would give an exception on when it comes to validation and hardware id since it's an extremely common thing to do.

 

[Caring1]

I'm sure the exception to the upgrade rule is the Motherboard, everything else is fair game.

 

[tabascosauz]

Does anyone know if activation still goes by automated phone systems?

 

[R-T-B]

Does anyone know if activation still goes by automated phone systems?

I can't think of a single reason besides lack of internet you'd want to do that, but yeah, you can do that by typing "slui 4 " at a command prompt.

 

[tabascosauz]

I can't think of a single reason besides lack of internet you'd want to do that, but yeah, you can do that by typing "slui 4 " at a command prompt.

Usually when I do a clean install it doesn't activate properly by default so i always have to call MS and do their automated phone system, which always works

 

[R-T-B]

Usually when I do a clean install it doesn't activate properly by default so i always have to call MS and do their automated phone system, which always works

Well if you want a free upgrade, you will have to upgrade your OS first. Microsoft likely will not activate one that hasn't gone through the windows 10 upgrade process from an 8 machine, as they have no way of knowing whether your license is legitimate.

 

[tabascosauz]

Well if you want a free upgrade, you will have to upgrade your OS first. Microsoft likely will not activate one that hasn't gone through the windows 10 upgrade process from an 8 machine, as they have no way of knowing whether your license is legitimate.

Check. Done that. Is the key showing in PC Properties the actual one, or if I should use Keyfinder.

 

[Static~Charge]

This is what I would do:

1. Shrink the hard drive partition until it's small enough to fit on the SSD.
2. Clone the Windows 8.1 setup to the SSD.
3. Boot off the SSD and make sure that Windows 8.1 is happy (i.e., no complaints about activation).
4. Upgrade to Windows 10 on the SSD.

This way, you know that Windows 8.1 has a valid setup on the SSD before doing anything else. Plus, the Windows 10 upgrade will be processed much faster on the SSD. Finally, you still have the hard drive setup to fall back to if anything goes wrong.

 

[Pill Monster]

Microsoft's "official take" which changes daily, is home/OEM versions upgraded via Windows update are bound to that machine, but clean installs can still be done.
Pro upgrades get retail versions.


But my pet kitten told me that W10 activation is done through kms servers, which means as long as you have the right key, and the right tool, activation can be done on any machine up to 25 times.

 

[R-T-B]

Check. Done that. Is the key showing in PC Properties the actual one, or if I should use Keyfinder.

Your key is likely a generic one used for upgrades. If it's Pro, it's VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T

 

[kajson]

So I spend the day yesterday installing the computer, using a prepared usb key with windows 10 on it.

I got it all sorted in the end but I'll share my fails anyways so others might learn:

Do not try to do a clean install win with win 10 home N, when you come from a machine with just win 10 home. It won't activate After reinstalling with the right copy, it was already activated right away after the first boot, didn't even have to initialise it.

There hasn't changed a whole lot in making clean install compared to older versions of windows, it's slightly better streamlined, though being asked at 3 different stages to enter a product key when it's not needed during install seems a bit annoying.

Further more it would be lovely if Microsoft finally learned to ask ALL questions regarding preferences updates and whatnot in one go, so you can then go away from your computer and come back to a fully installed/updated system including reboots.. Not impossible I would say.


There's still some little bugs, like when I installed realtek audio drivers, they'd go into an infinite loop asking for reboot and install the driver. And as a PDF reader isn't in the list of standard programs to select, foxitreader keeps saying it is not the default reader for pdf's even though I had said yes to the question 3x. If this fails to get file associations for PDF's I do hope Microsoft will fix this asap.


Thanks for the fast answers earlier guys, it gave me the confidence that all would be well, even when I cocked up the first install with the N version.

 

[tabascosauz]

@kajson Nice to see that it was a relatively smooth process for you. I'm sorry I couldn't get in here earlier to give you some tips in case you needed them; I just basically did the exactly same thing for my dad's work PC, and it was a pain. A gargantuan pain in the ass.

He started with Win 7 Pro, with a decent Haswell i5 / H81 system; it was slower than a snail since there were still leftover drivers, programs and files from builds prior (i5-650/H55) so I thought an SSD (250GB 850 EVO) might help him out. I cloned before upgrading, since I was afraid that MS' servers would buckle again and fail to activate. First, I ran into errors relating to the fact that the WindowsBT folder was downloaded before the data migration; I eventually got around that by deleting all 2.7GB and starting the download again. Then, it suddenly began refusing to upgrade in the middle of the wizard, saying that the system reserved partition wasn't big enough (evidently this is a problem with Samsung drives, but a problem that I didn't encounter until now because my own 500GB 850 EVO isn't being used as a boot drive), so I had to fish around for a partition tool that would allow me to expand the partition, because the most popular command line method didn't work. Finally, 3 hours later, I was able to get to the EULA and install, during which I took a break and did other things. When I returned, it had finished installation but reverted to Windows 7 for some reason. It turned out that there were security fixes, Silverlight, and a new Intel graphics driver that hadn't been installed so it aborted the upgrade. I had to manually install all of the "optional" updates since I didn't see a point in Silverlight, and then it finally worked.