Clean Install Windows 10  

Hello Jeff, and welcome to Ten Forums.

When you upgrade to the free 10 from an activated Windows 7, you do not get a product key. Instead, the activation for 10 is registered on Microsoft activation servers for that PC.

Since you installed Windows 10 with an invalid (generic) key on the PC, you will need to start over again.

This means that you will need to reinstall and activate Windows 7, then upgrade to Windows 10 again.

Clean Install Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

Windows 10 - Upgrade Installation - Windows 10 Forums

Don't feel bad! JeffK When the second drive here being on a desktop finally saw 10 go on over the newly installed copy of 7 for that purpose of seeing 10 upgrade over 7 it got buggy the first time around!

A second upgrade has taken place where suddenly everything is going on smoothly showing the headaches typical of upgrades and why I am waiting to see if the second upgrade will activate itself as the first did automatically simply by waiting a day or so. From there 10 gets a nice clean full install without hassles for the extra effort put in!

Now if you don't have a recovery disk for the laptop there and can't revert 10 back to 7 for some reason you can no longer download any 7 ISOs from Digital Rivers and simply take the product key from the sticker on the back or bottom of the model you have but will then need to go the MS Recover Center and follow the instructions there providing the key you find on the laptop itself. I think MS made this move not only not liking the DR site being up but how other things overseas were going on. But the place you want to go if you need to is at: Microsoft Software Recovery

Note the 32bit will be about 2.5gb or while the 64bit typically comes in at about 3.01gb when seen on the hard drive. From there you can then either burn the iso to dvd or make up a USB Installation Key to get 7 back on fresh again for the best possible results when going to make the upgrade! You want a clean not cluttered system registry for sure! How to Create a Bootable Windows 7 Installation USB Flash Drive

The 10 Media Creator can make up the usb key obviously while I continue to find that the use of a 3rd party app first used for getting 7 on back then still worked great for the 10 keys made up so far! UltraISO - Download

Jeff,

At least you'll be real familiar with the installation process now.

It won't take long once he gets going for sure! Meanwhile I now have to order more flash drives since the 4gb are too small to make up recovery sticks! I wonder if 10 will install onto a 1tb flash drive? Those are priced about the same as a 960gb ssd!

Hello Jesse,

Yes, you could use a DVD if you like. It's just easier and faster with a USB. That's all. :)