My PC came with Windows 8 and I upgraded to 10. Recently my PC was running so badly that I decided to do a full re-installation of 10 but it crashed and told me there was no Kernel.

As I understand it I can get a recovery disc and recover 8 then install 10 but I don’t have my original 8 disc with the product key.

So I have ordered a Windows 10 disc with product key and plan to just stick that on the PC.

Do I also need a system recovery disc or shall I just go ahead a try and put this new version of 10 on there? Will it replace any corrupted remains with the new OS or do I need to use a recovery disc to clean things up for the new OS?

Thanks!

You can download the Win10 installation files from Microsoft for free and create a bootable USB drive to install it. If your previous installation was properly validated, the new installation should be fine, you don’t need a new product key.

You can also use the USB installation disk to try to repair your existing installation. Whether that works or not will depend on what’s wrong.

New Win10 disc with its own original key should be fine

As above, you shouldnt need a new licence key if the previous win 10 was correctly registered, you should just be able to install a fresh copy of 10 and it will be recognised.

if you haven’t used that new licence send it back and get your money back. as above, if your install was validated then that’s recorded on Microsoft’s servers, so when your PC comes up again it’ll get validated automatically.

Download the iso from here and burn it to DVD.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO

As above, if you legitimately installed win 10, then the licensing is done from Microsoft’s servers – it recognises your computer id.

Separate question:

My daughter’s school laptop scheme has just renewed so I’m left with her old i3 lappy which is chockful of antivirussy bloatware and running v slow on Windows 7. I would normally just sort it out but admin is the school IT dept and I’m unlikely to be able to get my hands on the password (I know it’s probably ‘password’).

Can I just install a fresh copy of Windows 10 into it and basically get rid of everything that’s on it at the moment?

Can I just install a fresh copy of Windows 10 into it and basically get rid of everything that’s on it at the moment?

You should be able to. Although the free upgrade has officially ended, it’s still available for people with accessibility issues, on an honesty basis. If you Google a bit, you’ll find detailed instructions.

Cheers. Don’t mind the 20 quid or so for an OEM copy, if it means I don’t have to fake a disability and lie to the Microsoft gods.

the difficulty will be getting access to it if you don’t have admin rights. i’d be surprised if you can just stick a windows disk in and overwrite the old install.
you could use ‘boot and nuke’ ( which you would have to burn to disk ) to wipe the HD first though.

i’d be surprised if you can just stick a windows disk in and overwrite the old install

Assuming it doesn’t have BIOS level security, you can just stick in a bootable USB Windows installer, format the hard disk, and reinstall Windows. All the previous installation will be overwritten.

OK, good to know, ta. 8)

There’s a lot of misinformation on the ‘net about this. It’s easier than many make out.

You can download the Win10 installation files from Microsoft for free and create a bootable USB drive to install it. If your previous installation was properly validated, the new installation should be fine, you don’t need a new product key.

This is correct. Once your W10 install is activated the activation servers know it’s been done on your PC. Subsequent installs should just work without a key. Unless you’re having trouble downloading an image, you’ve wasted your money (as a rule of thumb, the best time to ask what to do is before you’ve done it…!)

the difficulty will be getting access to it if you don’t have admin rights. i’d be surprised if you can just stick a windows disk in and overwrite the old install.

Be surprised. (-: Remember, we’re booting off the installation media not running it from inside an existing Windows install, so Windows passwords are an irrelevance.

There can be added complications with W8 / W8.1, but W7 should just let you flatten it and reinstall. If you’ve not installed W10 before then you can give it your existing W7 OEM key, you don’t need to (and shouldn’t) install a previous version first.

if it means I don’t have to fake a disability and lie to the Microsoft gods.

You don’t have to do that either. MS’s official stance is that it’s still available for people with accessibility needs but there is no checking done to validate this. You don’t need to lie to anyone, or install accessibility tools, anything like that.

You can just download the installer – the media creation tool will let you create a bootable USB pendrive which is by far the quickest option – and install it. That’s it.

My suspicion here is that MS simply don’t care about consumer licensing any more. Market penetration is far more important to them, they want W10 on as many desktops as possible and to to kill off all the legacy systems. The enterprise is where MS’s money is coming from – why care about a grey $10 W10 OEM licence when you can rinse a company for ten grand for a database server?

Thanks folks. Yea I should have asked first but I had read stuff online and thought I needed to buy a disc. It was only £18 so not too bad. I’ll let you know how it goes.

You don’t have to do that either. MS’s official stance is that it’s still available for people with accessibility needs but there is no checking done to validate this. You don’t need to lie to anyone, or install accessibility tools, anything like that.[/quote]

You kind of said it before that, but just to clarify, if you have a valid licence key for W7 or newer then there’s no need to go anywhere near accessibility tools or make any claims about your need for them. Your licence key will activate W10 fine without you having to do anything other than enter it when asked for a licence key.

Currently typing on W10 activated with my W7 licence key in this way a couple of weeks ago. I note that I also tried this with a W7 Enterprise key on a VM and that now works fine too (it didn’t used to when W10 was first released, so MS have relaxed licensing even more than it was).