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I have not found any information from MS - only speculations from people like me, so I hope someone here has had better findings.

When I upgrade a qualified version of Windows to Windows 10 and then want to do a clean install, I've heard that the installer won't ask for a key. But what if my HDD is formatted before I attempt the clean install? How does Windows 10 try to detect the valid "upgraded" status? It seems that it doesn't in such a case, at least as far as I've tested.

So my question is: In that (or a similar) scenario: How do you clean install Windows 10?

In my case it's actually even more complicated. I'm from Germany so I can re-use OEM-licenses due to law. I have two qualified Windows OEM licenses which I both installed in a VM on my Linux installation and upgraded both to Windows 10.

Now I want to install one of them onto my bare physical machine - how would that be possible? Is there an official way of doing this or do I need to wait for those unofficial "backup license"-tools being updated to work with Windows 10?

Stevoisiak
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ElleJay
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3 Answers3

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Once you have installed the upgrade to windows 10, if you want to clean install your machine, you have 2 options:

1) you can chose the "reset" option to reset your machine to factory: enter image description here

2) Clean install. You can indeed format and reinstall as before with previous versions of Windows. Check out This link for more information.

Fazer87
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Just do a fresh clean install of windows 10, and when it asks for the activation key, you can enter any valid activation key from windows 7, 8, or 8.1.

If you are trying to activate windows 10 pro, you can't use any "home" or "basic" edition keys. It has to be windows pro/ultimate. 64/32 bit doesn't matter.

Starting with the November update, Windows 10 (Version 1511) can be activated using some Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 product keys. For more info, see the section Activating Windows 10 (Version 1511 or higher) using a Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 product key in this topic.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12440/windows-10-activation

Kevin Hyatt
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When installing, Windows 10 will always look for a product key.

If you are upgrading, reinstalling in place, or using "Reset this PC" the current OS key will be used, alternatively if you have a PC where the key is stored in firmware the installer will try to use that, if none of those options work the installer will prompt the user for a key (it might also look for a key on the installation media - for streamlined installations).

The user can skip the product key entry during setup (multiple skips may be required).

When it comes to activation the hardware is what matters - as long as the PC has been upgraded to Windows 10 previously it will always be able to do a clean install of that version of Windows 10 and activate even if no product key was entered during installation.

For new installs either a Windows 10 product key is required, or the user must upgrade from a previously installed Windows version.

Finally from what I understand, Windows defines the motherboard as the PC - as long as the motherboard remains the same it is the same PC. I don't know how this will work for Germany, but I suspect that they fulfil the letter rather than the spirit of the law and require you to do an upgrade on each machine you want to install on (i.e. they are not quite restricting your license use - just making it a pain).

More information on clean installs can be found here.

Edit: Completely rewrote my answer to be more correct, clearer and more concise. Apologies to anyone who was mislead by what I said previously.

Meeeeeesta D
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