Windows 10 FAQ

memyselfandi said:
Ok, I have windows 8.1 box which started as windows 7 retail, had a cheap upgrade from MS to 8 and the offer for media center which had another product key.

Trying to update from the iso seems to prompt for a key with no option to skip ... and the keys I have don't seem to work (I did previous reserve the upgrade n the system and am just trying to shirtcut it ...
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Make sure its not booting from the ISO (if you put it on a USB or Disk) when the computer restarts. When it restarts pull them out you dont need them after that. Otherwise it will boot from them and start a different process rather than continuing what it was doing. This way you should not need a product key.
 
Danny091 said:
hmm interesting, Wonder if it will deactivate your laptop if it does activate. Please let us know so i can put it in the faq :)
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Well after the second restart I now have the manual 'Activate' button in the settings menu. Going to spam that for a bit to see if it does it like it did on my laptop last night.
 
Azza said:
This is what Lynuel F had to say for himself.


Not sure that'll work exactly like that for the hardware change, but we'll see if this gets activated at some point I guess. I'll try a few more restarts.
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I hope not! I can't be bothered installing Win 7 every time. Does his answer relate to OEM licenses or retail licenses too?
 
Danny091 said:
Make sure its not booting from the ISO (if you put it on a USB or Disk) when the computer restarts. When it restarts pull them out you dont need them after that. Otherwise it will boot from them and start a different process rather than continuing what it was doing. This way you should not need a product key.
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This is running setup from within windows ... it checks for online patches and then the next screen asks for the key ... no reboots have been done ...
 
I have successfully upgraded my laptop (Dell Studio XPS 16) to Windows 10 using the ISO files above, thanks for all the tips.

My machine has a Bluetooth card that never worked very happily with Windows 8.1, but refused to even pretend to exist with Windows 10. Whatever happened to 'Plug and Play'?

Anyway, though Dell have refused to create any updated drivers since Windows 7, I found a file at Lenovo that has done the trick. There are several Broadcomm drivers on the Lenovo site, the one that worked for me was a Broadcomm BCM4324 driver which works with my Dell 370 Bluetooth mini pci card.
 
Danny091 said:
Strange, what version of windows are you running now including if its pro, home ext and what ISO did you download?
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The System applet in Control Panel indicates Pro and the ISO is Pro too ... which is odd.

edit:

Ok for the record what appeared to fix this was that there appeared to be a partical (a few hundred MB) copy of the hidden directory which the Windows 10 downloader created on the C: drive. I deleted that and rebooted and then tried running the setup from the Pro ISO again. This time it didn't prompt for any form of key and is currently installing after the first reboot (its a slow system with a slow disk)
 
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Oh bugger lol I'll DL the correct one now Danny lol

When I have downloaded it I see people saying you needed to upgrade from 8.1 so I presume I can't just do a clean right away ?
 
Ah right so can still use the same ISO and double click it but choose fresh install . love my laptop but it can be a pain because of the amd drivers . it's got a descreet 7700 that runs with the Intel and dell stopped doing the updates cuz basically they could never get it to work so I have to use modded sets from leshcat hence I will need to do clean install then disable driver updates then delete Intel and amd drivers and install the leshcat and just pray it does not keep trying to update
 
Danny091 said:
Upgrade to 10 on your current hard drive then do a fresh 10 install on your ssd would be the best way :)

You cant use both as they use the same key if thats what you where planning on doing?
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Well, I was hoping to have the win 8 install as a backup just incase anything didn't work on 10, though that's a good point regarding licensing.

Side question, if I do the upgrade on my win 8 install, but them remove all but my new SSD and install win10 onto there, will everything activate ok? I had some issues in the past with formatting an old drive which turned out to have the boot partition on it for some reason, so I'd like to keep that on my OS drive to prevent problems like that in the future!
 
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