Windows 10: Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First

Hey Shawn,

Just letting you know the clean install of Win 10 64-bit from a Win 7 32-bit worked.
Win 10 is permanently activated.
I was very happily surprised I didn't have any bootloader issues after this install.
All 3 OS's and Macrium Recovery boot up fine, no bootloader repairs needed *Smile

 

Great news David. Thank you for confirming. *Smile

 

When seeing the conversion here on a laptop before this guide was posted I ran the upgrade first followed by the 32bit 10 clean install which was later replaced by the 64bit final well until needing to wipe the drive entirely the second 64bit clean install went on and all three clean installs were found activated since the load on the servers were much lighter by then.

As rule with the Genuine Ticket option in the guide here I would expect to see the same activation results going from the 32bit 7 Home Premium to the 64bit 10 Home edition since the flavor of he kernel has nothing to do with the upgrade path like the edition does. Definitely could have used the method here however to save a whole lot of time! *Biggrin

 

Thanks for this nice method to upgrade- I have been testing this on several pc's, and it works as advertised.

I was testing this on 3 identical pc's, and was trying many things to understand the activation process- all three I ran gatherosstate in Win7 to get the xml file, I then installed on the first pc, activated, then made an image of the drive. Then I restored the image to the second and third pc, put in the machine specific xml and activated. All good- all pc's now have 'digital entitlement' and are in the Windows activation servers. I then realized I should probably have installed the x64 version instead on the 32bit version. No problem, I install x64 on the first pc, and it is activated with nothing done on my part since it was previously activated. So I make an image again, restore it to the second and third pc's thinking that it will work because these were also activated previously. These would not activate- (I had already deleted the xml files, so could not use that method), I tried many slmgr.vbs commands, but there was no way I could get the activation servers to figure out these were already activated. In the end, I simply ran syprep to get oobe to run, rebooted, created a temporary user in the setup wizard (removed later), and Windows was activated. (I'm not sure what sysprep/oobe are doing that I couldn't do with slmgr.vbs).

I read somewhere that the next release of WIn 10 will allow the use of Win7/8/8.1 keys to activate, so this xml method may not be necessary in the future. Hope that's true.

 

Hello cv007, and welcome to Ten Forums. *Smile

That's correct.

Starting in Windows 10 Insider Preview build 10565:

Device activation improvements: Microsoft has received a lot of feedback from Insiders on making it easier to activate Windows 10 on devices that take advantage of the free upgrade offer to genuine Windows by using existing Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 product keys. If you install this build of the Windows 10 Insider Preview on a PC and it doesn’t automatically activate, you can enter the product key from Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 used to activate the prior Windows version on the same device to activate Windows 10 by going to Settings > Update & security > Activation and selecting Change Product Key. If you do a clean install of Windows 10 by booting off the media, you can also enter the product key from prior Windows versions on qualifying devices during setup. Refer to the Insider Hub for more information on these activation improvements including requirements.

 

That will certainly make things a lot easier for many who are still used to the need to always enter a key. I'll be waiting for the retail build seen next july however once the free upgrade offer is over to purchase the newer build then with a fresh 10 key. Hopefully by then I will also have found a new usb WiFi device driver that will work with 10 and not 7 only for the second remote case here.

 

Hey Brink this file one need to add to the windows 10 iso one would still need to have a prior windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 install for it to work, yes ? What I mean is you couldn't do your guide on a brand new never used hard drive, right ? Windows 10 would have to see a prior windows version install for it to work ? Like how it was with the old windows upgrades methods, yes ?

 

Hello sn00ker, *Smile

You would need the gatherosstate.exe file created from an activated Windows 7/8.1 to be able to do so.

Of course to be legal, you can't have that same Windows 7/8.1 installed and activated with the same key while you have the Windows 10 installed and activated. You can only have either or, but not both.

 

That good to know, thanks . Though I am dual booting with 7 and 10 but my 7 is from the original install while my free 10 came from windows 8 pro . I don't know where your from but here in Canada Microsoft was selling windows 8 pro for $15 dollars. For that price I bought 3 copies, boy did I luck out lol *Biggrin

 

Anytime. It's even better now with the free Windows 10 offer. *Party

 

The only place this won't work at all of course will be on a VM. I set up a 10 VM to receive Insider builds and rather then the need to keep replacing 10 installs on a physical drive can allow the fast option to work on the VM. Hopefully the developer builds will be good for 90 days to allow time to examine and offer any feed back since the install 10 install won't last only 28 days?

 

Shawn, this is great! I haven't yet decided to upgrade to 10 thanks to two broken "standard" updates (one of which crashed a computer), but I'm encouraged by this tutorial. Thank you for working this out and making available!

 

Hello cpmusic, and welcome to Ten Forums. I hope it will help you. *Smile

 

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!

 

I agree about a clean install being better and more reliable than an upgrade install.
To me the important difference to consider is all programs must be re-installed after the clean install.
If a license is not transferable, you lose the license.

For me that meant i lost the "Free Pro licenses" i had installed on W7 from GiveawayOfTheDay and WindowsDeal.
So far i have not had a problem transferring/activating paid transferable licenses for programs such as MS Office.

To be willing to lose some non-transferable licenses is a personal choice.
I tried the upgrade install to try and keep the non-transferable licenses, but it didn't work out well for me.
After the upgrade install I did a clean install, it fixed all my upgrade install problems, and that is ok for me.