Windows 10: I cannot activate windows 10 Home after a clean install in my new SSD

After helping clean my computer and explaining that I needed a valid license, a friend who had purchased an extra Windows 10 license from PC World gave me the license. He said it has never been used. However, the license won't activate and I am getting the error C004C003.

:)

 

Win 10 clean install question

This is what I would do:

• Shrink the hard drive partition until it's small enough to fit on the SSD.
• Clone the Windows 8.1 setup to the SSD.
• Boot off the SSD and make sure that Windows 8.1 is happy (i.e., no complaints about activation).
• Upgrade to Windows 10 on the SSD.

This way, you know that Windows 8.1 has a valid setup on the SSD before doing anything else. Plus, the Windows 10 upgrade will be processed much faster on the SSD. Finally, you still have the hard drive setup to fall back to if anything goes wrong.

 

Installing Windows 10 on New PC?

I'm going to be building a new PC on Christmas and want to install Windows 10 on it. I have Windows 10 on my current PC, which I installed upgrading from 8.1 with the files on a USB. How do I go about installing a clean copy of Windows 10 on this new PC? I think I recall something about installing it once makes Microsoft recognize your hardware, but since this will be a PC I'm not sure what steps I need to take. Do I need to go 8.1 -> 10 or is there a method of going directly to 10?

 

Clean Install Workaround for Vista

You may remember this news story on techPowerUp! a couple of days ago relating to the lack of clean installs when using the Upgrade Editions of Vista, which required an old OS to be installed. However, Paul Thurrott has managed to find a workaround for this issue, which ironically lets users do a clean install Vista without any previous version of Windows, albeit a little tedious. Here are the steps:

• Boot from the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD as normal
• When prompted for a product code, leave this blank
• Select the version of Vista you have purchased and let Vista install
• When you boot to your desktop for the first time, run the Vista setup from Windows
• This time enter your product key
• When asked whether you want to do an Upgrade of Custom install, select custom and choose a clean install
• Windows will now install for a second time and you should be able to activate it

Remember, these steps are only advised for use in order to achieve a clean install of Vista, it is only legal to use the upgrade editions if you have previously purchased the appropriate version of Windows.

Source: DailyTech