windows product key question

[null_faun4]

I am upgrading to an ssd and as a result i need to reinstall windows, but i do not have a windows 10 product key(i have 10 because of the upgrade) and i do not have windows 7 installation media, i do however have a windows 7 key, will that work in the registration process now that the free upgrades are over?

[Slottr]

Contact microsoft before you do an upgrade and they'll help you out with that.

[vorticalbox]

if you signed into your Microsoft account, it links your key to your account so you will just need to sign it to activate windows.

 

I cant remeber where but there is a menu that shows if you're key is linked to your account or not.

 

You can also use you win7 during the install. I use my 8.1 key when reinstalling windows just fine.

[Mira Yurizaki]

You could clone the disk over, then use the Reset feature to effectively reinstall it.

[moderategamer]

6 minutes ago, null_faun4 said:

I am upgrading to an ssd and as a result i need to reinstall windows, but i do not have a windows 10 product key(i have 10 because of the upgrade) and i do not have windows 7 installation media, i do however have a windows 7 key, will that work in the registration process now that the free upgrades are over?

follow this to get your key 

 

 

[Enderman]

13 minutes ago, Slottr said:

Contact microsoft before you do an upgrade and they'll help you out with that.

 

10 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

if you signed into your Microsoft account, it links your key to your account so you will just need to sign it to activate windows.

 

8 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

You could clone the disk over, then use the Reset feature to effectively reinstall it.

 

7 minutes ago, moderategamer said:

follow this to get your key 

 

 

Wow at all the misinformation..........

 

1) you do not need to do anything with a key if you are reinstalling windows on the same PC

 

2) you only need to link your key to a microsoft account when replacing the motherboard (or moving to a new PC which has a different motherboard)

 

3) cloning is bad, don't do it

 

4) you do not need to get a key, windows activates automatically when reinstalled on the same motherboard

 

5) all you need to do a clean install is a USB drive, and follow these steps to put windows 10 on it: http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

 

6) you do not need windows 7 installation media

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, Enderman said:

3) cloning is bad, don't do it

Apparently you didn't read the part that I said to use the Reset feature to effectively reinstall Windows.

[vorticalbox]

Just now, Enderman said:

 

 

 

 

 

Wow at the misinformation..........

1) you do not need to do anything with a key if you are reinstalling windows on the same PC

 

2) you only need to link your key to a microsoft account when replacing the motherboard (or moving to a new PC which has a different motherboard)

 

3) cloning is bad, don't do it

 

4) you do not need to get a key, windows activates automatically when reinstalled on the same motherboard

 

5) all you need to do a clean install is a USB drive, and follow these steps to put windows 10 on it: http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

 

 

So why does the install ask for a serial when installing? Seems a pointless step if its going to activate anyway right?

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Apparently you didn't read the part that I said to use the Reset feature to effectively reinstall Windows.

Resetting windows is not the same as clean installing.

You also cannot "reset windows" to a different drive.

 

Just now, vorticalbox said:

So why does the install ask for a serial when installing? Seems a pointless step if its going to activate anyway right?

You click "do this later" and when you finish installing and the PC connects to the internet it will activate itself.

[moderategamer]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

 

 

 

 

 

Wow at all the misinformation..........

 

1) you do not need to do anything with a key if you are reinstalling windows on the same PC

 

2) you only need to link your key to a microsoft account when replacing the motherboard (or moving to a new PC which has a different motherboard)

 

3) cloning is bad, don't do it

 

4) you do not need to get a key, windows activates automatically when reinstalled on the same motherboard

 

5) all you need to do a clean install is a USB drive, and follow these steps to put windows 10 on it: http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

 

6) you do not need windows 7 installation media

 

 

Ok sorry... sometimes windows is funny I merely told him how to get a key. 

[Enderman]

Just now, moderategamer said:

Ok sorry... sometimes windows is funny I merely told him how to get a key. 

No. With windows 10 you do not need to do ANYTHING with keys unless your motherboard is going to change.

[WkdPaul]

Moved to Windows section.

 

@Enderman is right, if you're simply re-installing Windows 10, you don't need a key, skip the part that ask for a key and it'll activate itself when connecting to Microsoft servers.

[Enderman]

There are too many people who don't know how to do a clean install, you can read the howtogeek article and follow those steps or just follow along in this video:

 

The only difference is that before installing from the USB drive you would unplug your HDD (and any other drives) and plug in the SSD.

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Resetting windows is not the same as clean installing.

You also cannot "reset windows" to a different drive.

Explain what's the difference then, because all of the literature I've been seeing says Reset effectively wipes everything off the disk and does a clean install of Windows.

 

And yes, you can "Reset" to a different drive. I've done it before.

 

EDIT: Unless you mean different drive as in not the boot drive, because that's not what I meant. :\

Edited November 8, 2016 by M.Yurizaki

[Enderman]

7 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Explain what's the difference then, because all of the literature I've been seeing says Reset effectively wipes everything off the disk and does a clean install of Windows.

 

And yes, you can "Reset" to a different drive. I've done it before.

 

Reset just deletes the OS and you can choose to keep or not keep the data.

Reset does NOT touch the partitions on the drive.

 

When clean installing, you will get to this screen

You should delete everything here until you are only left with "unallocated space" which cannot be deleted, and that is where you install windows.

Then it will recreate the necessary partitions only.

 

This is not possible during a "reset" because a reset happens inside windows RE, which is on the drive itself. Clean installing works from the USB.

Windows RE is not dumb enough to format itself.

Instead, it just formats the windows partition and then installs windows.

It does NOT delete all the partitions and recreate them like I described above, it just formats the main windows partition.

It also does not remove any "factory backups" and other partitions that were on the drive previously.

 

You can learn more about windows reset here https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/01/04/refresh-and-reset-your-pc/

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Reset just deletes the OS and you can choose to keep or not keep the data.

Reset does NOT touch the partitions on the drive.

 

When clean installing, you will get to this screen

You should delete everything here until you are only left with "unallocated space" which cannot be deleted, and that is where you install windows.

Then it will recreate the necessary partitions only.

 

This is not possible during a "reset" because a reset happens inside windows RE, which is on the drive itself.

Windows RE is not dumb enough to format itself.

Instead, it just formats the windows partition and then installs windows.

It does NOT delete all the partitions and recreate them like I described above, it just formats the main windows partition.

It also does not remove any "factory backups" and other partitions that were on the drive previously.

 

You can learn more about windows reset here https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/01/04/refresh-and-reset-your-pc/

While the question has been more or less solved...

 

If this were a DIY computer and I'm migrating my drives, what difference does it make if I do a Reset or clean install? Why is starting fresh better? You're adamant about never cloning and yet I see no real reason to avoid it like the plague. People who've had issues with cloning are anecdotal at best because you know what? I've cloned my installs over plenty of times without issues. The last cloning I did was with my Inspiron 15 7559.

 

The only technical reason I see to do a fresh install is if the drive is not aligned properly. But considering that almost all modern devices are using 4K sectors, this is becoming an increasingly small issue.

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

While the question has been more or less solved...

 

If this were a DIY computer and I'm migrating my drives, what difference does it make if I do a Reset or clean install? Why is starting fresh better? You're adamant about never cloning and yet I see no real reason to avoid it like the plague. People who've had issues with cloning are anecdotal at best because you know what? I've cloned my installs over plenty of times without issues. The last cloning I did was with my Inspiron 15 7559.

 

The only technical reason I see to do a fresh install is if the drive is not aligned properly. But considering that most modern storage devices are using 4K sectors, this is becoming an increasingly small issue.

Please go to google and read through the millions of results of people having issues after cloning.

Then come back and tell me it is "anecdotal evidence" without laughing  thanks.

 

Also, you say it is anectodal evidence, and then you use anecdotal evidence yourself? Like wtf? lol

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, Enderman said:

Please go to google and read through the millions of results of people having issues after cloning.

Then come back and tell me it is "anecdotal evidence" without laughing  thanks.

Okay, AMD drivers suck, why are we buying AMD cards?

[Enderman]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

Okay, AMD drivers suck, why are we buying AMD cards?

They used to suck.

At the moment the amount of issues are pretty on par with the amount of nvidia driver issues considering the current market share of both parties.

That means AMD drivers are not worse or better than nvidia.

People buy AMD cards because of usually better price performance.

[Mira Yurizaki]

So I did look up issues with cloning. I still see no technical reason not to do it other than alignment. Most of the issues I've found were because the BCD partition wasn't cloned or it had the old ID of the hard drive. I forget where it was but Microsoft had a procedure to manually fix the BCD partition so that it will boot on the cloned system partition. That was the method I used way back when. On the last clone I did I just used Samsung's cloning utility.

 

So... while I'll agree that a fresh install gives you the best chance for a headache free migration, cloning is still not something that should be avoided like the plague. If you want to do it manually, there's a procedure to do it. Otherwise, just get a Samsung SSD and use their migration tool.

[vorticalbox]

32 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Resetting windows is not the same as clean installing.

You also cannot "reset windows" to a different drive.

 

You click "do this later" and when you finish installing and the PC connects to the internet it will activate itself.

ok so a clean install requires a key? If not how do they know? I don't think I like the idea of windows tracking some id on my motherboard.

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

ok so a clean install requires a key? If not how do they know? I don't think I like the idea of windows tracking some id on my motherboard.

Did you not read the post....?

It says

 

Quote

you do not need a key, windows activates automatically when reinstalled on the same motherboard

and

Quote

You click "do this later" and when you finish installing and the PC connects to the internet it will activate itself.

 

If you do not like windows binding itself to your motherboard ID then don't use windows...? Or any other paid software for that matter?

You do realize this is to counter piracy, right?

[vorticalbox]

4 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Did you not read the post....?

It says

 

and

 

If you do not like windows binding itself to your motherboard ID then don't use windows...? Or any other paid software for that matter?

You do realize this is to counter piracy, right?

it was more that I didn't know it did it rather than it doing it.

 

I guess that means one key is linked ti one motherboard?

 

So if you change motherboards you just enter your key/Microsoft account and it will just work fine?

 

 

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

it was more that I didn't know it did it rather than it doing it.

 

I guess that means one key is linked ti one motherboard?

 

So if you change motherboards you just enter your key/Microsoft account and it will just work fine?

 

 

Ah ok.

 

Yes the key is linked to one motherboard, but if you want to change motherboards or move windows to a different PC you can use this method: http://www.windowscentral.com/how-link-your-windows-10-product-key-microsoft-account

 

Then when you log in to the microsoft account on the new PC or same PC with different motherboard windows will get activated.

 

But this is unnecessary for replacing any other PC component, only motherboard.

[vorticalbox]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Ah ok.

 

Yes the key is linked to one motherboard, but if you want to change motherboards or move windows to a different PC you can use this method: http://www.windowscentral.com/how-link-your-windows-10-product-key-microsoft-account

 

Then when you log in to the microsoft account on the new PC or same PC with different motherboard windows will get activated.

 

But this is unnecessary for replacing any other PC component, only motherboard.

awesome. I actually had no idea that I didn't need to put in my key, would have saved so much as I always forget to get it lol

 

what happens if the machine is never connected to the internet? Would it still work then?