New
#540
Do you have W10 Pro installed at the moment? Does it say in Update & Security > Activation that "Windows is installed with a digital license...." ?
If so then there is a digital license for this PC on the activation servers. You can clean install W10 Pro and skip entering a key when asked. It will activate from the existing digital license.
Yes it says Windows is activated with a digital license. Don't remember when I upgraded but its been over a year. The 2004 win 10 version literally made everything worse. It's a lot better now except for the fact that it takes me 10 minutes for my pc to boot up. So that's why I wanted to try a clean install.
Clarify what is activated:
Win 10 Home?
Win 10 Pro?
Win 10 Pro
Ok I think I now know what happened. When I bought the PC originally in 2012, It came with Windows 7 Home Premium. I must have upgraded it to Windows 7 Pro sometimes after buying through my college. And that freed upgraded it to Windows 10. My college doesnt offer Pro versions anymore so I would not have the key that I installed for Win 7 Professional. Sorry for the confusion.
Given that..............I don't think you would have any activation issue with a clean install of Win 10 Pro.
You'd delete all partitions from the drive early on in the installation process, leaving only "unallocated space".
Let Windows make whatever partitions it sees fit, then examine them in Windows Disk Management.
That's great news. Your PC has a Digital License for W10 Pro. You can clean install W10 Pro and it will activate.
As this was a W7 PC it won't have a key in its bios, that only started with machines built for W8 or above. So when you start the clean install you'll be asked for a key. You should click on 'I don't have one'. Then you'll be asked which edition to install. Choose Pro, once it can contact the activation servers it will activate from the existing digital license.
I've never tried the 'Cloud' reset, it's a relatively new feature.
But however you put Windows back on the machine, whether you wipe the drive and do a clean install, or you Reset the existing Windows install (Cloud or locally) activation remains the same. As soon as it can connect to the internet the first thing the newly installed Windows will do is send the hardware ID of the PC to the activation servers. If they reply that there is an existing digital license for that ID then Windows will activate.