Selling PC with windows 10

[ryane]

I'm selling my PC off in a few days and I want to reformat my boot drive. I'm currently running on Windows 10 Pro but it was from the free upgrade on a Windows 7 Pro a while back. If I do choose to format my disk and run a Windows 10 installation, will my Windows 7 key still work or is there another way around this?

 

I also found this article:

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/reset-windows-10-pc

which doesn't need any formatting but it lets Windows resets by itself. Is this safe enough that I won't have anything to worry about when I'm selling my PC?

[ProjectBox153]

The Windows 10 key should be registered to the motherboard. You might not even need a key when re-installing Windows 10.

[AtomicAftermath]

Windows activation is confusing nowadays, worse comes to the worse, you can always pick up a windows 10 pro key < $25.

[ttam]

You wont need a key. If it asks for one, skip and it will activate once it hits Windows.

[divito]

I bought a new SSD and used the media creation tool for Windows 10; I was initially curious as well, as on my other SSD, Windows 10 was a free Windows 7 upgrade like in your case, and it doesn't assign you a Windows 10 key for it. 

However, when installing, it asks for a key but allows you to skip that section. Since my Microsoft account is linked to my install, it is technically activated automatically.

 

[ryane]

2 minutes ago, divito said:

I bought a new SSD and used the media creation tool for Windows 10; I was initially curious as well, as on my other SSD, Windows 10 was a free Windows 7 upgrade like in your case, and it doesn't assign you a Windows 10 key for it. 

However, when installing, it asks for a key but allows you to skip that section. Since my Microsoft account is linked to my install, it is technically activated automatically.

 

I don't know if I have a Microsoft account. So do I just create one, reformat and have everything loaded with my account and then sell it off?

[Daniel644]

My laptop came with 8 was immediately updated to 8.1 and later to Windows 10, I can freely swap between all 3 of those versions of Windows whenever I want, so YES you will be fine to download the correct version of Windows 10 using the media creation tool and install it, you won't even need to enter the key, heck I have 2 drives in my PC, one has 8.1 the other has 10 and I can at will switch between them, both are activated and I never once had to even type in the key.

[WkdPaul]

2 minutes ago, ryane said:

I don't know if I have a Microsoft account. So do I just create one, reformat and have everything loaded with my account and then sell it off?

it doesn't need to be linked to your account.

 

Simply re-installing Windows 10 and skipping the key will work (worked on a few of my PCs, it just needs an initial activation, any other re-install or reset after that, you don't need to re-enter the key).