Having to do a 'clean' windows 10 installation to be able to activate license?

[Lesthegringo]

Hi all

A few years ago my Game rig PC hard drive failed, taking with it the Win 10 installation I had, so I took the opportunity to upgrade to an SSD. Unfortunately for me I had not kept the activation codes, so I lost them with the old drive, but after loading up Win 10 it was obvious that not reactivating wasn't really an issue, so I left it like that.

Fast forward to recently, and for another application I require the ability to hide the task bar, but now I find out that it is disabled with un-activated Win 10 installations.

As I find it a bit galling to spend nearly 200 pounds on a Win 10 license from Microsoft direct, I looked around at where you can get cheaper basic license keys, and I came across Kinguin, who offer OEM licenses for far less (about 25 dollars) apparently from multi-device licenses sold with new laptops

However when it came, it requires that I do a 'clean' Win 10 install, which has me worried. Does this mean that I have to install it on a blank drive? I am concerned that I lose all the settings etc, and because the current Win 10 install is on an M.2 drive I can't use my old external drive units to help me. I'm super nervous about losing what I have, obviously I can back up a load of it but it would be a load of work to reconfigure everything back to how it was. I know from past experience that you always manage to lose something

Any advice is gratefully received!

Cheers

Les

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Looks like you got OEM version of Windows.

Windows 10 OEM vs Retail: What's the Difference? - MiniTool Partition Wizard

This post explains Windows 10 OEM vs Retail and shows you how to transfer Windows 10 license to another PC.

www.partitionwizard.com

And clean install will wipe out whatever you have there.

Reinstall Windows - Microsoft Support

Learn how to reinstall Windows on your PC and how activation works after it's installed.

support.microsoft.com

 

[Lesthegringo]

Ok, so a waste of money then, thanks for clarifying. I will just live with the taskbar

Cheers

Les

 

[Deleted member 197115]

If you had license linked to your MS account you can still reactivate it even if the product key is lost.

 

[RasmusP]

Can you take a picture of the "needs a clean install" Error?

I can't really find anything about this issue.

Normally any win 10 license that was used for a pc connected to the Internet will be stored on Microsoft servers with some hardware ID.

So you can change everything apart from the motherboard and your Windows will automatically re-activate.

So that's the first weird thing here..
Normally a re-install on the same motherboard shouldn't be an issue when changing only changing the harddrive.

So maybe there's another issue and your windows already "has a key" but it's not activating properly and you need some other fix, than a fresh key?

So please take some Screenshots for us

Also, please start an admin cmd prompt (win+r, type in cmd, then shift+enter).
Or:
Open Start
type in: CMD
Right click CMD
Click Run as administrator

At the prompt, type:
slmgr.vbs /dlv
Hit Enter

This will give you all information about your activation status etc.
Feel free to black whatever information might be personal, but afaik there's nothing in there that shouldn't be publicly available.

Here's information about this "script command".

Slmgr.vbs options for obtaining volume activation information

Provides a list of options available for the Slmgr.vbs script, and describes usage cases for their use.

learn.microsoft.com

I can't really help you in detail until in about 2 weeks though, sorry

I'm very busy until the 6th of February and can't invest the needed time.

If your windows really has no key right now, here are a few ideas:

- maybe there's a trick to get around the error and get the OEM key to work for a later activation anyway

- cut 30 GB off from your current boot drive and install a second Windows with the OEM key, create a Microsoft account while doing so to bind the key to your ms account.
Then create another user account on your real Windows, using the MS account.
Maybe that activates the windows automatically then, since the hardware is identical and the key is bound to the account.

- use some old laptop/pc Windows 7/8 key and use the trick via upgrading. Issue: you need a device where you can run win 7. My Z490 mobo (10600k had no win 7 drivers anymore).


- there are tools that allow you to switch the windows key without anything from Microsoft. I only did this about 6 years ago so I don't really remember but basically you "simply" put the key into Windows via cmd/powershell and Windows won't know what's going on.
At the next reboot, it'll activate automatically.

 

[Lesthegringo]

Just a quick answer on what happened to the old installation, it was years ago on a physical HDD that simply stopped working - the disc wouldn't even spin. I kept it for a while until I finally realised that apparently an unactivated Win 10 installation seemed to work fine, then threw it away. I suspect it was linked to some Win 7 Discs I bought when I lived in Abu Dhabi that had three activations per disc, and so when Win 10 came as an upgrade it 'grandfathered' the license. Not sure I have those win 7 discs any more

Cheers

Les

 

[Botmeister]

Bit off from the license discussion, but personally I love a fresh installation of Windows every few years. It's just a matter of backup'ing documents and scripts + make a screenshot of all my installed applications. Going through all your Windows settings again has its advantages. Microsoft continuously provides new/adjusted settings to your system.
And with a fresh install I take the time to review them all again (especially the privacy part LOL) and see which ones are still necessary. When issues occur on the fresh Windows I solve them again, instead of blindly trusting on settings I did 3-5 years ago. But people with a lot of system adjustments like GPO's / registries / networked devices / etc will probably diagree to this method

 

[BrunoBæ]

But people with a lot of system adjustments like GPO's / registries / networked devices / etc will probably diagree to this method

Hehe you can be sure of that.
There are even some people who stay at Win7 because of this.

CatsAreTheWorstDogs: But I admit it becomes harder and harder

 

[trichens]

You have just received a product key I assume, @Lesthegringo ?
Do you not have the below options available?

Or this?

I've purchased licences from "secondary sources" on several occasions and never yet had a problem with them.
I've just installed the O/S from the Microsoft download site, installed and entered my key.

 

[Novopaine]

I haven't tried one of these 3rd party OEM bulk keys yet, but I'm thinking that which ever you buy needs to match the version of the OS you elected to install. For Windows 10 Pro you would need a Windows 10 Pro key and not a Windows 10 Home key.

In the past I've always bout Windows OEM disks because it was half the price of retail, but I'm not sure about the bulk OEM keys.