2 OSes, 1 Product Key?

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openmedia

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#1356501 1-Aug-2015 10:16

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I'm keen to get a clean Windows 10 on my Wife's new laptop. Currently Win 8.1 with nothing else installed as the laptop is a week old.

Swapped the HD to an SSD and upgraded the RAM and hoped I could use the Win 8.1 key to clean install 10, but no luck. Now going through the upgrade process from 8.1->10 which appears to pull down about 2.7GB of data.

Is there any chance Post Upgrade I can extract a KEY that will allow for a clean re-install.

I've already pulled the OEM key out of the UEFI firmware, but that wasn't accepted for the 10 clean install and it showed up as unactivated.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

nathan

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#1356502 1-Aug-2015 10:33

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openmedia: I'm keen to get a clean Windows 10 on my Wife's new laptop. Currently Win 8.1 with nothing else installed as the laptop is a week old.

Swapped the HD to an SSD and upgraded the RAM and hoped I could use the Win 8.1 key to clean install 10, but no luck. Now going through the upgrade process from 8.1->10 which appears to pull down about 2.7GB of data.

Is there any chance Post Upgrade I can extract a KEY that will allow for a clean re-install.

I've already pulled the OEM key out of the UEFI firmware, but that wasn't accepted for the 10 clean install and it showed up as unactivated.

when you upgrade a digital license entitlement certificate is injected into your machine and after the upgrade, you have a device based entitlement that is stored in the cloud. You can just reinstall on the same hardware.

The embedded UEFI product key would be for Windows 8.1; that won’t activate Windows 10. You can use the downloadable ISO at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 which has an embedded product key.

Using that ISO, run SETUP.EXE *from within Windows 8.1 so that it can detect that you have a licensed, activated OS*.

A quick way to "clean" install is:

Then when it asks what you want to migrate, choose “nothing” or “data only”.

That will result in a “clean” Windows 10 OS that can successfully activate.

If you do a clean install using Windows 10 media (any media) and never went through the upgrade process, you won’t have a license and the machine won’t activate.

openmedia

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#1356585 1-Aug-2015 12:36

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nathan - Thanks for clarifying.

Upgrade is progressing now.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

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