How to get Windows 10 again if HD crashes free from Microsoft

Have a dell computer with a 500gb HD. The hard drive has win 10 installed which is the free up grade from Microsoft. The hard drive is making strange sounds. I feel the drive is going bad. I have purchased a new drive and want to put the free Microsoft win 10 on the new drive. Do I need a back up of the current drive? I really want a clean install? Any advice or help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Lowell12.

Hello Brick,

Thank you for welcoming me to Windows 10 forum. I tried your first suggestion Windows 10 ISO download with my old hard drive still in my desktop. I assume I was to keep the old hard in my unit to get the download? I finally put the new hard drive in my unit and used the dvd disk I made from the download and win 10 started to install. Everything went well until it was time to put the product key number in?? I had no idea what the product key number was? So I thought, I would install my legal copy of Win 8.1 pro on the new hard drive activate and then I could get the free Win 10 Pro. Installed 8.1 pro and my product key would not work. I could not activate my 8.1 Pro on line or by phone?? Called Microsoft and they told me that my 8.1 product key is blocked? I got no further information from Microsoft other then take my legal copy of win 8.1 pro back to the store (Walmart where I brought it two years ago) and get another copy?? I don't understand this blocked situation?

I hope I explained this situation well enough for you to understand..Thank you

If you still can, there is SW that enables you to clone your disc. I did this when changing to a Samsung SSD to speed up my computer and Samsung supplied the cloning SW. No key entry was required. I hope this helps.

cereberus is correct. Windows 10 has been installed and activated on the computer once already as an upgrade, therefore the digital entitlement for Windows 10 is supposed to be stored on Microsoft activation servers. If you install the exact same version and edition of Windows 10 on that computer - click skip or do this later or I don't have a product key when asked for a product key. It is supposed to retrieve the digital entitlement from Microsoft activation servers and activate.

I use the words supposed to because early on after the July rollout Microsoft had some problems with their activation servers and some digital entitlements did not get stored correctly.