Just istalled W10 on desktop - what a kerfuffle!

Well, I couldn't be bothered to wait for my W10 upgrade over W7 / 8.1 download so I installed W10 from a install USB flash media I created last night. I thought I could install W10 clean. Wrong! I wiped my C drive by formatting and installed W10. I assumed that signing in with my MS account would verify that I was a legit upgrader. However, I knew this was not going to work as W10 asked for a product key. I skipped this and installed anyway.

Major Problem....once installed, W10 could not activate! Nothing would work. So I went back to W8. But I forgot that my w8 copy was also an upgrade!!! So I had to scrub that installation and install Vista Business 64bit!!!! I Good job my PC still has an optical drive! (I did have W7 but 'lent' it to my sister as an upgrade over Vista on her PC).

Unlike W7 / Vista could not natively detect my network adapter. So I had to did out my motherboard's driver disk for the first time in a good three years and install from there. Then activate Vista. Then plug in my W8 USB install flash drive.....wait a minute, Vista dies not natively support USB 3.0 so I had to install in a USB 2.0 port round the back
of my PC.

Once I clicked the install file on the USB flash drive, Win 8 installed as an 'upgrade' after wiping all the old Vista files. Repeated the same procedure with W10 over W8.

So now it is all done.

I do remember having this issue with W8 over W7 and having to install initially as an upgrade. But then subsequent installs were allowed via the old fashioned format and install routine. I guess the same is now true of W10?

P.S. I did read that W10 has to be upgraded over W8.1 and W8 was not eligible. Not true as I went straight to Win 10 from W8 completely skipping the 8.1 upgrade.

it took three atempts to download and install on my toshiba laptop but what a disapointment after all yhe hype i think i was one of the odd ones as i loved windows 8.1 and think it was far superior to this downgrade to windows 10 i found windows 8.1 easier to use and navigate i know i am going to be in the minority but why try to fix something that is not broken if an oap like me could master windows 8.1 anyone can ps my next door neighbour is 82 and managed windows 7 extremely well need i say more i have used windows os since version 3 i still think the best version was xp but there you go nothing lasts forever in my opinion windows 10 tries to be everything to everyone but fails on so many points sorry to be so negative but we all have a opinion the sad part is i cannot revert to windows 8.1 as it would just download and update to windows 10 all over again

Yea, you must upgrade to Windows 10 first and make sure you're successfully activated, then you can do a clean install.

Since the upgrade is using your current genuine installation as a foundation.

Ironically, Windows 10 installed my MFC printer and it's over 10 years old, lol. Likewise, my WIFI card is several years old and it was working right from the upgrade. It's likely using built-in drivers as well, since the separate program that came with my WIFI card is no longer installed, but it doesn't need to be, since it's optional.

The only issue I had was having to reinstall my display drivers, but once that was done, everything seems rather hunky-dory right now.

What are the cons of having not activated win 10?

to fix the activation issue, very simple....

just keep clicking activate, activate, activate, non stop until it activates! crazy right?

also, you do not have to upgrade to w10 before you do a clean install.

just download microsoft windows 10 iso file, run the setup, hit upgrade,

after that, go into activate and keep pressing even though it says error, just keep pressing activate..... voila.

mrazndead said:

also, you do not have to upgrade to w10 before you do a clean install.

just download microsoft windows 10 iso file, run the setup, hit upgrade,

after that, go into activate and keep pressing even though it says error, just keep pressing activate..... voila.

You contradicted yourself...

You said you don't have to upgrade, red text.

Then you said just hit "upgrade," blue text.

You have to upgrade on top of your previous Windows installation for a clean install activation to work.

So worth keeping the installation as it is or reinstalling W10 clean again?

Well it's quite simple actually, I had the same problem, then I went to the bay and voila.

To activate:
Command prompt as admin and:

slmgr /ipk W269N-WFGWX-YVC9B-4J6C9-T83GX
slmgr /skms kms.xspace.in
slmgr /ato

From Microsoft site Windows 10

If you will be installing the operating system for the first time, you will need your Windows product key (xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx).