Question regarding upgrade options.

So this has been a nightmare for me. I always prefer a clean installation but this seems almost impossible unless you buy the product. This will be my 4th attempt at Win10. The first time I did the "Refresh my pc" option after I upgraded. It corrupted in the middle lost it all.

2nd Attempt was okay but I wanted a fresh install. I heard if you use the key you get from the win10 upgrade when installing a fresh copy over it works. This was not the case, they key was black listed and thus attempt 2 failed.

Attempt 3 I heard skipping the product key panel lets you activate based on the hash from your 7 or 8 key on your MB or something. This also doesn't;t work.

So 4th attempt before I do this. I have two options, Keep all files or keep nothing. As of this moment my Win 8.1 is a brand new fresh installation with nothing on it. I want to know if I select keep nothing will it still upgrade properly? I am deathly afraid of it not working this time. Should I cut my losses and select keep all? It will create a windows.old though,

Mansome said:

Just upgrade so you see that it activates. Once that happen you can boot to the DVD and blast it all away and it should activate the next time you clean install.

I tried that and it said my key was blacklisted because it's the generic windows 10 key everyone has.

It doesn't work for me to do that....you say "Should blast it all away" No it doesn't.

Windowz10 said:

There are posts on this site and others suggesting that either the confirmation of the key for clean installation is glitched, or that the activation authentication servers are lagging badly.

Of course, no way to know which- or neither...

I am far past tired of installing windows. Going to upgrade from a clean 8.1 and say screw it.