Yes, but what to do if I upgrade, say, my motherboard - like how to activate after clean install then?

If it is temporary, I won't miss win 8 that much anyway. I just thought I'd encourage you cause I think win 10 is really good. New efficient browser, new features and you can turn off UAC without...

Yeah, Microsoft accounts are not necessary for activation. Installation of win8.1 (and win10, I think) allows you skip account creation and it doesn't prevent you from activating. As for the clean...

Do you think if I uninstalled win 8.1 from my current machine and installed/activated it on another, I'd be able to upgrade that machine to win 10 too?

I have a strange one! I successfully upgraded from win 8.1 pro to win 10 pro and it activated without a problem. Then I decided to re-install win 8.1 pro on a different drive as I have the...

Duh, a quick browse though this forum has put me right. Everyone who upgrades gets the same generic key for their particular version of Win 10 and it's the hardware ID of the machine which gets saved...

Hi, I successfully upgraded from Win 8.1 Pro to Win 10 Pro using the 'MediaCreator' setup tool (for some reason, I never received a notification about my reserved copy) and it activated itself...