Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First

Night Hawk · 15 Nov 2015

Well the 10240 for the Home and Pro editions saw 10 Home. 10 Home N, Pro, Pro N, Single Language 32bit 10 Home only there, and then either the dual flavor Home or Pro iso being 5.6gb in size too big for a blank dvd and requiring a 6gb or larger flash drive which would be at least an 8gb. The MCT was in two 32bit and 64bit flavors now only seeing the one download which goes for the Windows 10, Windows 10 N, or Single Language still unchanged options.

The first two are both 32 and 64bit Home and Pro with the installer automatically detecting which edition you already have on. Plus there's now another web upgrade tool with the "GetWindows10-sds____________.exe" file name which would automatically detect and download the correct edition while that should still have the choice for 32bit or 64bit if not automatically seeing the same kernel downloaded.

Now the thing needed here would be someone who has downloaded one of the TH2 builds and tried the GetTicket.xml method on a system not having seen 10 activated previously on it or using a different key. With two hard drives and two VMs each on one desktop or the other the two TH2 and 7 VMs can't be activated with any option here.

cpmusic · 22 Nov 2015

Night Hawk said:

You'll be far better off following the steps in the guide here cpmusic over the initial upgrade follies many of us have seen! These steps can be a real time saver with promise of much better end results once 10 goes on fresh. The guide here will lift the burden many would otherwise end up contending with!

Since no one has ever accused me of being too reasonable, I decided to try the upgrade from 7 to 10. I imaged my main drive and restored it to a second drive as a backstop, but I was amazed to see that the upgrade worked. There were a few hiccups, like getting my old laser printer installed, but it went well.

But a few days ago I tried re-loading a driver from a CD that came with hardware, and my optical drive spit it out. I didn't think much of it at the time, but this evening I tried to watch a Blu-ray, and the same thing happened. The drive appeared in Device Manager, but it wouldn't appear in File Explorer (or whatever it's called these days) and it just wouldn't work. I tried it again with a few CDs, DVDs and BDs, and got the same results. I searched for a new driver and other explanations, but I found nothing that worked. After a while I came to the conclusion that life's too short.

So I restored my last image of 7, and I'm back to believing in the clean install, which I will do when I've had some distance. I'm just hopeful I won't have to pay a second time for lifetime licenses on some third party software.

Night Hawk · 22 Nov 2015

I think you found out something the hard way first! Upgrades can seem to go perfect at first glance and then that hidden bug waits to spring out at you! Some upgrades can be slippery while others will not be so clever and end up seeing a trashed OS! Or you might end up somewhere in between total disaster and sneaky bugs!

This is why "Clean Install Preferred Most Often by Experienced Users" seems to fit the bill the best! And that's where this guide can come and save the day by preventing someone from trying it the hard way first! Been there Done that already!

Several times actually!

cpmusic · 22 Nov 2015

I should know better -- heck, I DO know better -- but the thought of re-installing the third party apps didn't thrill me. Lesson learned...again.

Night Hawk · 22 Nov 2015

You'll get there sooner or later!

W10 over 10 upgrades being the same version only different builds do tend to go much smoother however and sometimes can actually work out a lot like a service pack type result. But you then have to expect the need for something to be installed again as part of the deal. With the initial upgrade install to 10 over a clean copy of 7 the second upgrade install to repair the first seemed much better for sure while that first clean install was still going to be seen to!

JackSpicer · 22 Nov 2015

This thread is a literal godsend, everyone knows you never upgrade windows!

Boot-clean-install forever.

Night Hawk · 23 Nov 2015

Well this guide came about after Shawn and me were discussing how frustrating this process of MS mandating upgrade installs was going to be since upgrades can be buggy! Some of the bugs won't even be seen right away and then suddenly spring out at you! The clean install while not in every case however does prove itself over time to be the ultimate success story and why a guide for this type of option especially with MS changing the rule book a bit can be the life saver you toss out to someone drowning in upgrademare Land!

"when will it ever stop? waaa..."

"Clean Install Best Results Guaranteed!" we think anyways!

modalman · 30 Nov 2015

Thank you . This completed the explanation of what I needed to do to achieve a clean install of Windows 10 on a Dell Inspiron 1545 that had previously had a Dell OEM version of Windows 7 Home Premium installed on it. I suspect this will work on other Dell OEM WIN7 upgrades to WIN10 but I cannot verify this guess. The problem I had was that my hard drive failed and I did not have any of the old original installation media, but I had a valid product key for Windows 7. I also really wanted to do a clean install on a new SSD. Initially, until I found this thread, I had tried downloading and making a bootable version of a DVD of WIN10 (from the Windows site you suggest in this main post) and did a clean install on a new blank SSD, but it would not validate using my WIN7 key. I was lucky that my old drive would still boot, but was corrupt so running really slowly with many error messages, however I booted from the old drive one last time and followed these instructions to extract the GenuineTicket.xml, moving it to the new system as you describe above - it worked a treat and upon restart it validated. Man do Microsoft and Dell make it hard to do this! Dell refused to provide the old OS disks, and the Microsoft site does not explain how to do this (or at least I could not find it from a Google search). Upon installing WIN10 to the SSD the old Dell 1545 Laptop is working and performing much better than it ever did on an old spinning HD and running WIN7 - so I thoroughly recommend this upgrade.

Brink · 30 Nov 2015

I'm glad it could modalman, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

Night Hawk · 30 Nov 2015

Hello modalman Welcome to the Ten Forums!

I won't need to ask how long ago it was when you downloaded 7 by way of the Media Creation tool since the Threshold 2 build that came out this month as well as the Insider Preview equivalent 10586 would immediately take the 7 product keys. And Dell wasn't alone in no longer providing recovery disks once 7 came along and the lean was then more towards usb. And now with 10 you will no longer see Windows coming on optical media while older model laptops often lack a boot device menu and require a dvd install.

When going to upgrade an HP laptop with the 32bit 7 Home Premium it was before this guide was even posted and the end result of upgrade to 10 over OEM 7? Buggy! Now as far as comparisons between 7 and 10 you are looking at a fresh copy of 10 on a brand new SSD in contrast to a 5 or 6yr. old OEM copy of 7 put on years back by Dell.

There won't be any comparison even if you were now putting Vista or XP on the SSD since the fresh copy of Windows will always run faster and smoother then an older install where you have loaded everything on at one time or another. The registry likely has numerous now invalid clutter. And then disk errors as well as bad sectors on the old drive are highly probable.

Now to make a note here while the desktop always arrives much faster with 7 especially with 10 being a dual platform OS 10 sees things loaded up faster with the progress made with the MinWin kernel introduced with 7. It's still good to hear you are happy with 10 however since 7 media from Dell and other companies can no longer be provided. MS saw the last day for anything with 7 on it or any 7 media on the last business day of October.