brief Win 10 install from ISO notes

While I had a 10240 ISO prepared from the ESD from the Insider update, I downloaded a new .iso from Microsoft.

The new one is 3.255 GB in size. The older one, 3.899 GB. (Both are Pro X64.)

I re-installed 8.1 from an image. The first time I ran the upgrade, I chose to keep files and settings only. The upgrade went OK, but I could not activate the result. I got the message that the key was not the correct one.

I tried again: restored 8.1, and upgraded it. The result was activated.

For the acid test, I booted from a USB thumb drive with the updater. I deleted the partitions on the boot drive, and clean installed Win 10. The result was activated.

Aside from the detail about needing to keep everything when running the upgrade from 8.1, everything went as advertised.

Yes, you can do a clean install of Win 10 from the free upgrade after once activating the upgrade over an activated qualifying older OS.

Good news! Your the first one running 10240 clean install and activated. Wish to have the link of new ISO file? Thanks in advance!
Will try it under 10240 upgrade.

How did you download an ISO "from" M$? Please explain? The Windows (10) Media Tool Creator downloads an ESD and converts the ESD to an ISO. So if that's what you did, you didn't really download an ISO.

nosecureboot said:

How did you download an ISO "from" M$? Please explain? The Windows (10) Media Tool Creator downloads an ESD and converts the ESD to an ISO. So if that's what you did, you didn't really download an ISO.

An .iso was the result that I set the Media Creator tool for.

Windows 10

I didn't observe the actual files downloaded. It obviously did some CPU-intensive stuff before completion. (Maybe converting an .esd to an .iso.) If the file downloaded wasn't the .iso, but was simply converted to one, is there any reason that I should care? In my ignorance, I believe that the files contain the same data, although the .esd file is smaller (more highly compressed?).

As I mentioned in the first post, the older 10240 .iso I had from the Insider program was also a conversion from an .esd. (Through esd_decrypter.)

I'd be interested in finding out why the two .iso files are significantly different in size.

bobkn said:

An .iso was the result that I set the Media Creator tool for.

Windows 10

I didn't observe the actual files downloaded. It obviously did some CPU-intensive stuff before completion. (Maybe converting an .esd to an .iso.) If the file downloaded wasn't the .iso, but was simply converted to one, is there any reason that I should care? In my ignorance, I believe that the files contain the same data, although the .esd file is smaller (more highly compressed?).

As I mentioned in the first post, the older 10240 .iso I had from the Insider program was also a conversion from an .esd. (Through esd_decrypter.)

I'd be interested in finding out why the two .iso files are significantly different in size.

Compression, I think.