Windows 10 Upgrade was bad ! Clean install was great!

Torquemada · 02 Aug 2015

John Pombrio said:

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.

You don't need a Microsoft account to activate a clean install nor is the "key" kept in the BIOS.

I quote:
The basic process is that when you perform an upgrade to Windows 10 (over a genuine Windows 7 or 8.1 system), an anonymous and unique hardware hash is generated that is based on your systems hardware configuration. Since it is anonymous, you do not have to use a Microsoft Account. This hardware hash is generated even if you choose to install Windows 10 with a Local Account.
That same hardware hash is sent to Microsoft servers and a corresponding certificate is created to validate your systems activation status. From this point forward any future installs, including one where you delete all partitions and install Windows 10 from scratch, will be activated because of that unique hardware hash and the corresponding certificate. Since it is all stored on Microsoft’s servers there is no reason for us to keep a backup either.
http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/h...s-10-activated

rezpower · 02 Aug 2015

Torquemada said:

You don't need a Microsoft account to activate a clean install nor is the "key" kept in the BIOS.

I quote:
The basic process is that when you perform an upgrade to Windows 10 (over a genuine Windows 7 or 8.1 system), an anonymous and unique hardware hash is generated that is based on your systems hardware configuration. Since it is anonymous, you do not have to use a Microsoft Account. This hardware hash is generated even if you choose to install Windows 10 with a Local Account.
That same hardware hash is sent to Microsoft servers and a corresponding certificate is created to validate your systems activation status. From this point forward any future installs, including one where you delete all partitions and install Windows 10 from scratch, will be activated because of that unique hardware hash and the corresponding certificate. Since it is all stored on Microsoft’s servers there is no reason for us to keep a backup either.
http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/h...s-10-activated

Yes. I can confirm this. I upgraded to windows 10 and when I did a clean install I didn't use microsoft account
and windows was activated. The only strange thing is that you guys say you skip when you're asked to enter
product key. But when I installed my windows 10 it never asked me for a product key during setup!

John Pombrio · 02 Aug 2015

Torquemada said:

You don't need a Microsoft account to activate a clean install nor is the "key" kept in the BIOS.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/h...s-10-activated

Good to know. Thanks! That hash code is the same thing that was used with OEM licensing back in the day. Change the wrong piece of hardware on the computer and I got to talk to Susie or David in India and type in a whole string of numbers that they would give me. MS got tired of that and started putting the info into the BIOS but I guess that is now gone as well. Interesting that the hash code is now user agnostic so selling a working system is not a a problem. Here is what Paul Thurrott has to say (Windows Store - I donno if he means a MS server named store or the app called Windows Store)

Good news, Windows 10 fans: if you follow these instructions, your genuine Windows 7- or 8.1-based PC will always be associated with Windows 10, and you will be able to clean install the OS at will going forward, and without ever having to manually activate. It will just work.

And it’s simple enough: just upgrade the PC to Windows 10 normally. Once.

You can upgrade using the reservation system and Windows Update. Or by using the Setup media/ISO you downloaded from Microsoft. Either way.

When you do so, Windows 10 will activate—yes, you need to be online for that, obviously—and the PC’s digital entitlement will be registered with Windows Store. What gets sent to Windows Store is interesting: it’s a hardware ID, unique to your PC, which is comprised of information about its CPU, motherboard and, if available, TPM. What’s not send to Windows Store is your Microsoft account information. Instead, it is the PC that is registered, essentially, which makes sense since you may later sell it or give it away. That PC will always activate new installs of Windows 10 going forward. (And yes, your previous OS will still activate too. This process doesn’t impact that at all.)

tfwul · 03 Aug 2015

rezpower said:

Yes. I can confirm this. I upgraded to windows 10 and when I did a clean install I didn't use microsoft account
and windows was activated. The only strange thing is that you guys say you skip when you're asked to enter
product key. But when I installed my windows 10 it never asked me for a product key during setup!

That is a little strange. When I did a clean install, after the initial upgrade, it asked me for the key, but after I entered it, it was rejected, I got an "Invalid key" error. I then selected to skip this step.

All in all: I went back to Windows 7 (restored a Windows 7 image, that I made just before this Windows 10 adventure).
I guess there is quite some confusion on how to do a proper clean install and not all software is seem to work.

=

MsGeek · 09 Aug 2015

I just upgrade from win 7 to win 10 and I had no issue with prefromce. As well boot up time is the same as win7. I had error with my soundcard, but I had same problem in win 7. I had some error, failing booting up. But that was the buggy soundcard driver was the cause. Now when I had reboot couple times, its gettin more stable. my cpu is between 2% to 5% in idle. So I start to like win10.