Do I lost the free upgrade option if I have to do a recovery?

Curious Guy · 21 Dec 2015

Since mid 2014 I have had to do a "recovery" from USB for my Toshiba laptop three times. I really want to upgrade to Windows 10. However, I am afraid that if I do the upgrade and then my machine starts having issues and I have to reinstall from the recovery USB that I will lose my ability to upgrade to Windows 10 again. Worse would be that I wouldn't be able to recover from the USB at all.

Ideally what I would like to be able to do is create a new recovery USB for a clean Windows 10 (without all the bloatware (damn WildTangent garbage)) but I don't know if that is an option.

So if I upgrade and then have to do a recovery, will I have the option of upgrading again for free?

Any and all information is most appreciated. Thank you.

dalchina · 21 Dec 2015

Hi, welcome to tenforums. Once you have installed and used Win 10 (upgrading or entering a code as necessary) you are free to reinstall either the 32 bit or 64 bit version assuming it's compatible with your hardware. Swapping the hard drive is ok.. occasionally calling MS is necessary.

Now it sounds like your recovery approach is maybe to factory restore your laptop. If so, there's a far better way- use disk imaging.
Having a disk image means you can restore your PC to how it was when you created the image. Thus you get it working with Win 10, all drivers running- you create an image. Then it goes haywire- you restore the image. Want a bigger disk? Swap it, restore your latest image. Your hard disk fails? Get another, restore the image.

Images can and should be updated regularly and before any major change, and after one.

Using images saves a huge amount of time and potentially a huge amount of frustration- they are also a full backup - you can extract files from them.

Macrium Reflect Free, Aomei Backupper (free) (simpler to use and includes incremental imaging) + external storage medium + boot disk.

Brink · 21 Dec 2015

Hello Curious Guy, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

When you upgrade to Windows 10 from an activated Windows 7/8, you will have a digital entitlement saved on Microsoft activation servers for that specific PC for your Windows 10 activation. You will then be able to clean install Windows 10 on that PC, skip entering a product key or enter the Windows 8.1 key, and have Windows 10 activated.

Curious Guy · 21 Dec 2015

Thank you both for the answers to my questions. Fast response and right on point. Dalchina - thank you for the suggestions about disk imaging and the software. I never would have thought of that. It will be nice, if I need to do a reinstall, to not have to do the downloads and software and updates. Not only time consuming but also uses up a lot of my bandwidth at home.

Time to mark this question as solved :)

Thank you both again and I hope everyone has a great day.

Brink · 21 Dec 2015

You're most welcome. I'm glad we could help. :)