Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First  

DavidE said:

Hi Shawn, how are you?
Thanks for another great tutorial !

When you say the clean install must be for the same version, that means 32-Bit or 64-Bit, right ?
I have a triple-boot box with W7 32-Bit and i want to upgrade that OS to W10 64-Bit.
So, this tutorial won't work for what i want to do ?

Could I do clean install of W10 32-Bit using this tutorial, then do a "normal" clean install of Win 10 64-Bit ?
Or, should i do a normal Win 10 upgrade which would give me Win 10 32-Bit (upgrade), then do a normal clean install of Win 10 64-Bit ?

tyia, David

Hey David, :)

A product key will activate the same 32/64-bit edition of Windows, but I haven't tested this method with 32-bit vs 64-bit yet to verify. As long as it's the same edition and language, it would be worth a try to see if it may activate.

I didn't have this guide to work with when going from the 32bit 7 Home Premium on a laptop to the 64bit 10 Home edition. I first nuked the upgrade over the 7 preinstall with the 32bit to see the 32bit clean install to verify the clean install would activate simply leaving the same dvd in the drive and later nuked the 32bit for the 64bit clean install as an extra step that wasn't even needed.

With the other guide you can even avoid possibly the need for the upgrade type install first as long as you already have a working activated previous version on the iMacs to work with. As far as 10 being stable it will need to see the usual updates come in over time as with any other version when first new. You won't be seeing any SP1s however. One large service patch came out at the start of September with another one probably coming before the end of the year.

Brink said:

Hello Greg, :)

This can be done if the current Windows is activated to create a gatherosstate.exe file from, or you already created a gatherosstate.exe file previously to use.

Shawn,
As usual, you guys and gals from this site have come through again! This is an AWESOME tutorial that you have crafted. It work flawlessly. I was hoping that it would activate my Win 10 after the first failed Clean Install, but copied the XML file to the folder, rebooted and Shazam, it was Activated.

I may not have the knowledge to contribute to questions posted here but this has always been my first site to visit if I have any PC problems and you've always had an answer for me. I greatly appreciate all the work that you and others put into this site. Again I will offer a donation to this site if you are accepting them, because I wouldn't have gotten it fixed without it.

As Gomer Pyle once said, "Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!"

Greg

You're most welcome Greg. :)

Just by asking questions, you're helping others that may have the same question be able to use the same solution.

There's an old saying of "seek and you shall find" actually being a good lesson in life to always be ready to ask questions in order to get at the facts. Sometimes you have to dig a little harder then it seems others have to but it's all part of the learning process!

I Tried running the gatherosstate.exe right from a separate sub folder I extracted it to to keep along with the extracted 10 set up files and it produced the xml file instantly from the present 10 install showing it also could provide a quick reactivate for a clean install when 10 has already been activated but may need a little help in the event the activation servers are running slow again?

I still won't get the chance to try this out on the old 900-1 case I passed along since one friend is rather slow about things wanting to continue with his 8.1 laptop never having run the old case with 7 Pro there. Here we already have 10 available as a freebie OS and he still hasn't even run 7 for a day yet.

Glad it could help Art. :)

It's going to end up helping a lot more people then you realize! With MS insisting on upgrades as the means of introducing 10 as a free upgrade the volume of buggy upgrade installs will and already is beyond belief as you can imagine with millions of new 10 user each week!

With the guide here you can avoid "Buggy 10 Domain" entirely by way of a first time clean install and no disaster story! I even shared the link for this one on the social networks since I know people are still seeing 10 apps on their systems. They won't have to go through the fix or replace buggy upgrade headaches! Instead they have a chance to see smooth sailing!