Hello.
I have been unable to activate W10 from a clean installation, neither by using a w7 code (COA sticker), neither from those w8.x systems that have activation string encrypted in bios (do you need UEFI/GPT installation for this way to work?).
Ideas?.
You 1st have to upgrade an existing Win7 or Win8/8.1 installation that is already activated before you can do clean installs of Win10. Windows 10 won't accept typed in keys from previous versions. I made the mistake of clean installing my daughters comp (trying to do 2 computers at once) then realized I had to rollback to Win7 -->activate -->update to SP1 -->upgrade to 10 Pro -->verify activation -->clean install -->update. After all is said and done, when you are finally doing the clean install for Win 10 (after upgrade of course), during installation, select the option to "skip this step" for entering product key. I will automatically activate once install is complete.
I don't understand. Doesn't a clean install wipe everything that was installed earlier?
When I do a clean install I start with a fresh formatted partition.
When you do an upgrade your computer hardware info gets stored on Microsoft server and that allow you to re install the operating system without license key, but if one doesn't upgrade first then you can't do a reinstall unless you buy a copy of windows 10 . So to get this windows 10 free offer you must upgrade your system afterwards once its activated you can then perform a clean install
So, you must first install w10 as an update to an existing and legit w7/w8x and then reinstall it again clean from scratch?
I should have guessed that. Thanks.
PS - Will it work if I modify number/type of partitions? For instance, I do not like most systems configured with everything as a single partition (C drive). I also despise GPT. It doesn't offer anything I want.
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