Can't activate upon reinstall

acmanten said:

I have a valid Win 7 Product Key - and my Win 10 system did not accept it when I added it - to authorize my new upgrAde to Win 10.

Is there any email address or URL available at Microsoft where we are able to check a PRODUCT Key for validity ?

Thanks, Cliff M. acmanten.

Windows 10 will only accept Windows 10 Product Keys (Retail Keys).

The upgrade process is activated with a general upgrade key that can't be used to activate your Windows 10 version. :) That's why with a clean install (after an upgrade from Win7/8.1), you need to skip the part to enter a product key, and after installation, Windows 10 will check with the Microsoft server if you already had an activated upgrade installed on that machine.

arisutan said:

I had a working and activated version of 10 home for a good while but did a reset because of problems mentioned in OP. I'll try and reinstall with Home and see if it activates... (only assuming it's home since i'm fairly sure thats what my 8.1 was)

Okay, that should work then. If you had an activated Win10 Home on it, a clean install will get activated as well. When asked for a product key, just skip it.

Rudy Mas said:

Okay, that should work then. If you had an activated Win10 Home on it, a clean install will get activated as well. When asked for a product key, just skip it.

Thanks so much for your help. I'll do this and if I run into any more problems I'll post again here

Rudy Mas said:

Okay, that should work then. If you had an activated Win10 Home on it, a clean install will get activated as well. When asked for a product key, just skip it.

Thanks to your help I think I managed to fix it. I made another bootable drive and made sure to select Windows 10 Home edition and it seemed to activate upon startup no problem. Thanks so much!

I have one more unrelated question: How do I know if I can upgrade my Win7 desktop to Win10 for free? I never ever got the "reserve" icon in the tray..

arisutan said:

Thanks to your help I think I managed to fix it. I made another bootable drive and made sure to select Windows 10 Home edition and it seemed to activate upon startup no problem. Thanks so much!

I have one more unrelated question: How do I know if I can upgrade my Win7 desktop to Win10 for free? I never ever got the "reserve" icon in the tray..

Normally, you have to have Windows 7sp1 installed to upgrade.

The only thing you need to do, is check which version you have. (32/64-bit)

Starter, Home Basic & Home Premium upgrade to Windows 10 Home.
Professional & Ultimate upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.

And also the language of your Windows 7. (You can only upgrade to the same language.)

If you account for all of this, you don't need the Get Windows 10 icon. Just use the Media Creation Tool to download the ISO you need and then you do the upgrade with this. Again, first running setup.exe from Windows 7 and afterwards you can do a clean install, if needed.

Rudy Mas said:

Normally, you have to have Windows 7sp1 installed to upgrade.

The only thing you need to do, is check which version you have. (32/64-bit)

Starter, Home Basic & Home Premium upgrade to Windows 10 Home.
Professional & Ultimate upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.

And also the language of your Windows 7. (You can only upgrade to the same language.)

If you account for all of this, you don't need the Get Windows 10 icon. Just use the Media Creation Tool to download the ISO you need and then you do the upgrade with this. Again, first running setup.exe from Windows 7 and afterwards you can do a clean install, if needed.

Yep, I have SP1! Is an upgrade a recommended method of install? This is my main PC which I use for a lot of work so if it's unstable I'm worried it'll cause problems. Fresh install means so much reinstallation of software though

arisutan said:

Yep, I have SP1! Is an upgrade a recommended method of install? This is my main PC which I use for a lot of work so if it's unstable I'm worried it'll cause problems. Fresh install means so much reinstallation of software though

Depends on the stability of your current OS. The thing I always do is, I make an image of my OS harddisk before upgrading to a new OS. If anything goes wrong in the first week, I can always go back to my previous OS. (I prefer this methode instead of doing a reverse inside the new OS itself. Probably, both methods are okay, but putting an image back is always better, in my opinion.)

Anyway, to get your Windows 10 activated, you always need to do the upgrade first. You can then test your installation and if anything isn't working properly, you have two choices. Or you go straight back to the image you made, or you bite the bullet, and do a fresh install and reinstall all the programs you need.

I know, the last option is a lot of work, but in the end, you get a freshly installed system that should keep you happy for years to come.

At this moment, our household has 6 systems running. 3 of them are running Windows 10 as an upgrade, and 2 of them as a freshly installed version, 1 is still running Windows Vista. The 3 upgrades I did were 2 Windows 8.1 Pro versions, and 1 Windows 7 Starter. All of them are running fine, after I tweaked it with the drivers that worked best with them. Only my main desktop PC and a HP ProBook has all new Windows 10 drivers. For the others, I needed to use Windows 8 or even 7 drivers to have it properly working.

All of this to say, an upgrade is always the first option you have to do. You don't have a choice. After this, you can test if everything is working like it should, and if it is, you don't have to do anything else. But make sure you have an image of you harddisk, so you can always go back if anything goes wrong.