I was also prompted to go through the entire Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) by selecting my basic settings including logging in with my Microsoft Account. I then selected to keep nothing from the Windows 7 OS in this case so that meant no settings, files or anything was transferred into the new Windows 10 installation. That will download the Windows 10 ISO and begin the upgrade directly in the current OS. The other way to clean install from a valid Windows 7 or 8.1 system is to use the same media creation tool but instead of creating a USB drive to boot from just select the option to Upgrade this PC now. Still not sure if it was tied to my Microsoft Account or not but that was the only common denominator between the clean install below and this one after I wiped out the partitions and laid down an entirely fresh install of Windows 10. When I checked the activation status following the install it showed the Windows 10 Pro was activated. The product key step can be skipped so I did that and removed all partitions on the SSD and did a bare metal install signing in with my Microsoft Account. That process asks for a product key to be entered and I was unsuccessful in entering a Windows 7 or 8. You could create USB installation media using the media creation tool Microsoft released for Windows 10 today and then boot from that, remove partitions and then install to that cleared drive. There is more than one way to get a clean install of Windows 10 in an upgrade scenario like this.

One of the big questions over the last few months about the release of Windows 10 was clean installing onto a former Windows 7 or 8.1 system and retaining proper activation of the subsequent Windows 10 install. As you prepare to clean install Windows 10 please take the time to read my article entitled How to make sure your free copy of Windows 10 is activated which was posted after this one.Īn inplace upgrade must be completed first on your Windows 7 or 8.1 system to generate the proper codes for Microsoft to validate/activate the OS on that hardware.

Windows 7 media creation