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Activating Windows 10 might take a few days
This assumes that the Free Upgrade offer was followed correctly.
The OS has to be UPGRADED first.
You cannot perform a clean install until the Windows 10 license key has been
generated, encrypted, stored and activated on the upgraded OS and registered on the MS activation servers.
If you did not successfully upgrade your machine, you can stop reading, roll back or restore your original OS, then go through the proper steps to take advantage of the free upgrade offer.
For step-by-step instructions, read though this tutorial.
Windows 10 Upgrade (TenForums.com)
There are a few methods of accomplishing the upgrade. The most foolproof upgrade method is highlighted - by mounting or extracting the ISO, you have to be running Windows and an upgrade is accomplished by running setup inside a running Windows.
To Upgrade to Windows 10 using Media Creation Tool
To Upgrade to your Reserved Free Windows 10 from Get Windows 10 (GWX) app
To Upgrade to Windows 10 with an ISO file
To Upgrade to Windows 10 with USB Installation Media
A Clean install without upgrading first results in:
- You have Windows 10 on a 30 day trial basis.
- If you are a Windows Insider testing Preview builds and you remained in the program
You have a Preview build installed. This install will update to the next Preview build when released.
The current Preview build is 10.0.525 - I'm running this now
YOU MUST UPGRADE FIRST
The Insider program recently became active again. A new Preview build was offered on Tuesday (18 August) to Insiders on the Fast ring. This is apparently affecting MS servers and might cause activation on upgraded machines to take additional time.
There have also been some additional checks and balances put in place to authentic Windows 10 installs. There are still no new Insider keys and the 10.0.525 build is using the 10.0.240 key - this is the same key the Retail installs use as the seed.
Please allow a few extra days for your system to activate before becoming alarmed or concerned.
I do not have a citation for this information, it is only an educated guess on my part.
See: Get help with Windows 10 activation errors - Windows Help
The Go to Store button on Settings > Update & security > Activation might help, but when I tried that once before all it did was offer Win10 for purchase. I expected it to actually present a means to resolve the issue. Your experience might differ.
If you launch an elevated Command prompt and run the following commands, you'll see additional licensing information
These examples are on my 10.0.525 install. Notice that the evaluation date equals the date that the Preview build expires and that the expiry report states that it is permanently activated. The evaluation date in the first report will tell you if you're running a Preview build or if the upgrade was done properly (there will be no evaluation end date)
slmgr /dlv
slmgr /xpr
Last edited by Slartybart; 21 Aug 2015 at 12:55.