Windows 10 Upgrade was bad ! Clean install was great!

John Pombrio said:

Here is the rub. The product key needed for a clean install is stored on the motherboard. With Win8.1 and most newer mobos, this is not a problem and a clean install will activate. It gets more complicated with Win7 and/or older hardware and a clean install may not activate on its own. See the forum post here before taking the plunge:

Solved Clean install not activated despite upgrading first. - Windows 10 Forums

Here is the story about the move to BIOS based product keys back in 2012:
Windows 8 moves to BIOS-based product keys - CNET

Frankly speaking, I wasn't aware the key was stored on the motherboard.
I am not an expert on this, really I am not. It may very well be true.
Sofar I believed the activation took place based on the combination of key and hardware-id's.

rezpower said:

I know that microsoft had no choice. Not every person out there can do a clean install. Too complicated setting up all.
But from my experience the upgrade from 8.1 was a disaster. Many errors in event viewer, Slow system and slow boot time, failed windows updates ...etc

Tonight I did a clean install after my update and all went smooth. Windows was activated when I got to desktop and surprisingly windows update did it's job correctly this time. No failed updates at all. The system is now fast and I find windows 10 to be a great upgrade to 8.1

I was thinking that it would be too early to go for a clean install as maybe I should wait for all hardware vendors to get their drivers ready. But to my surprise all drivers were already installed with windows.

So if you have a nice new computer my advice would be to do a clean install and not stick with the upgrade!

Back on topic after derailment.

Same here. I came from a very clean Windows 7 system and the update gave me numerous BSOD, unclean and unfixable task scheduler, many different errors in the system logs, uncorrectable corruption found by sfc, and hangs. I did a clean install and everything is fine, except it has taken me days to get all my programs, music, etc, back in place. Still installing loose ends.

I think many of your average joe with ill-maintained computers will run into this and won't be able to fresh install or recover their system to their satisfaction.

Geneo said:

Back on topic after derailment.

Same here. I came from a very clean Windows 7 system and the update gave me numerous BSOD, unclean and unfixable task scheduler, many different errors in the system logs, uncorrectable corruption found by sfc, and hangs. I did a clean install and everything is fine, except it has taken me days to get all my programs, music, etc, back in place. Still installing loose ends.

I think many of your average joe with ill-maintained computers will run into this and won't be able to fresh install or recover their system to their satisfaction.

Same here. It took me too days to get my windows as I want with all my programs installed and personalized. But once done, WHAT a pleasure to have this nice clean windows. The upgraded pc was a mess full of errors and no way to fix. Now I do not advise everyone to do this! If you don't know what you're doing just stick to upgraded windows.
But if you can spend some time doing a clean install its damn worth it.

Once windows is ready and updated and personalized I made an backup image and now I can restore anytime.

I think part of the problem might be that people are upgrading without their computers being as clean and stable as they could be to begin with.

Before I upgrade, I run Windows update several times to be sure I have all the updates to my old OS in place. Then I run disk cleanup with the system files option. I run CCleaner both to delete what files it finds and fix the registry several times until it finds no more errors. Then I delete system restore points.

After I upgrade, I do the exact same process again. I haven't noticed any difference in performance or error rates between that method and clean installs and it sure beats restoring all my programs and data.

NavyLCDR said:

... Then I run disk cleanup with the system files option...

What is this, a CCleaner cleaner option?

NavyLCDR said:

I think part of the problem might be that people are upgrading without their computers being as clean and stable as they could be to begin with.

Mine was clean and rock solid stable, I keep a very tight ship. Made no difference. The update was fubar.

NavyLCDR said:

I think part of the problem might be that people are upgrading without their computers being as clean and stable as they could be to begin with.

Before I upgrade, I run Windows update several times to be sure I have all the updates to my old OS in place. Then I run disk cleanup with the system files option. I run CCleaner both to delete what files it finds and fix the registry several times until it finds no more errors. Then I delete system restore points.

After I upgrade, I do the exact same process again. I haven't noticed any difference in performance or error rates between that method and clean installs and it sure beats restoring all my programs and data.

Well, in my case, I did the same, but Win10 could not able to take Display driver (nvidia) and internet (neither ethernet, nor wireless).

Trying to revert back the upgrade.

And back off topic, I found that the MSDM table on the BIOS (which is where my Win8.1 key was located) no longer exists after upgrading to Win10. I used Read Write Everything to look. The only other place it could be now is stored on your MS account in the cloud. So a clean install of Win10 on a previously upgraded machine would need to log into your MS account to activate.

DoubleR said:

What is this, a CCleaner cleaner option?

No this is windows disk cleaner. just type "disk cleanup" in windows 10 search bar and it will come up.
Windows 7 and 8 had it too.

rezpower said:

No this is windows disk cleaner. just type "disk cleanup" in windows 10 search bar and it will come up.
Windows 7 and 8 had it too.

Yep. It will start up and scan the disk "Calculating....", then when it is done calculating you have to click on "Clean up system files" and it will start all over again. It's very slow.