Upgraded old Dell laptop, originally from Vista to W8 under £25 offer, then to W8.1 via MS Store free upgrade then to W10 via Windows Update. Wanting to eventually sell the laptop so wanting a clean fresh installation and W10 showing as being activated, wiped the hard drive and now the new fresh install wont activate. MS advice reinstall W8 and do the whole lot again, not happy!
Faffy upgrade process and no activation
- Thread starter thenewoc
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Soldato
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- 19 Nov 2011
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I assume you 'reserved' your upgrade before actually upgrading?
I don't think so as W10 was already released at the point when I was upgrading so the upgrade to 10 was offered via Windows Update. Nothing about this hardware has changed apart from removing an old SD Card which was being used for ReadyBoost. The fact that it was already activated should have meant it was safe to perform a clean install.
Soldato
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- 23 Dec 2009
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Should have just allowed it to clean install itself in the refresh options after you upgraded.
Last edited:
We wanted to be sure there wasn't any information on the hard drive that could be recovered. Since it was already activated it should have allowed for a fresh install since the hardware ID should be on the activation server.