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Thread: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

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    How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Ready to claim your free upgrade? Here's how to do it properly.
    Read more.

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    Biscuit (30-07-2015),KeyboardDemon (31-07-2015)

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    A few observations:

    • If you hit the Media Creation Tool website from non-Windows, you get an ISO download instead of the tool
    • To make a UEFI-bootable stick from an ISO, just format the stick as FAT32 and copy-paste all the files from the ISO

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Quote Originally Posted by directhex View Post
    A few observations:

    • If you hit the Media Creation Tool website from non-Windows, you get an ISO download instead of the tool
    • To make a UEFI-bootable stick from an ISO, just format the stick as FAT32 and copy-paste all the files from the ISO
    The stick needs to have the primary partition as active before that will work and a lot of people might forget that, the tool does that for them at least. Although they could download Rufus to make it really simple if they don;t know how to do that

    Also no need to do wuauclt.exe/updatenow after creating pen drive cause sometimes that fails, just run setup.exe from the root of the pen drive whilst in windows and it will 100% work then.

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    there's no active partition in uefi

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Nice guide guys

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Quote Originally Posted by mjgr33n View Post
    The stick needs to have the primary partition as active before that will work and a lot of people might forget that, the tool does that for them at least. Although they could download Rufus to make it really simple if they don;t know how to do that

    Also no need to do wuauclt.exe/updatenow after creating pen drive cause sometimes that fails, just run setup.exe from the root of the pen drive whilst in windows and it will 100% work then.
    Partition active/whatever status is a BIOSism

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Slightly OT:

    You've heard all the hype and for once it holds true: Windows 10 is really rather good...
    Should you even bother upgrading to Windows 10? It is, in our estimation, shaping up to be the best Windows to date...
    Sorry, I cannot recognize this at all and I've been installing builds since the first "Insider" build was made available. To me, Windows 10 is about on par with Windows 8.1, which was a huge step down from Windows 7. However, to each his own...

    Kudos on providing the clean installation guide, though.

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Quote Originally Posted by ChinesePate View Post
    there's no active partition in uefi
    To be honest I don't think I have ever not tried it without active partition since the days of Legacy BIOS installs. Will try it sometime

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Is anyone noticing any performance boosts because of dx 12?

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    "In order to take advantage of the free upgrade offer and clean install Windows 10, you first need to carry out an in-place upgrade to Windows 10 from a genuine copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1."

    I don't think this is valid. I used the tool right away for upgrading and got an activated Windows 10 version running. I DID NOT use the in-place upgrade method. I used the tool.

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    I am now running Windows 10 on 3 systems including my laptop - 2 of those systems before were Windows 7 and my notebook had Win 8.1 - I'm loving Windows 10 - it seems a lot more refined. You could call it a service pack upgrade but it works.

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    I used the tool to create the usb drive but then ran it from within my 8.1 installation and one of the steps asks if you want to create a fresh install ('What do you want to keep?' - choose nothing and it wipes the drive)

    Now got a fresh install running fine. It automatically activated too.
    "Don't mention the war!"

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    I've got a number of Win 7 and 8 retail licences which I transfer between machines, how would I go about transferring the activation after doing an in-place upgrade?

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Quote Originally Posted by DDY View Post
    I've got a number of Win 7 and 8 retail licences which I transfer between machines, how would I go about transferring the activation after doing an in-place upgrade?
    That's the $64 million question, that noone but Microsoft can answer, but hitherto hasn't.

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    Quote Originally Posted by DDY View Post
    I've got a number of Win 7 and 8 retail licences which I transfer between machines, how would I go about transferring the activation after doing an in-place upgrade?
    So far, everyone that's reported doing an in-place upgrade, vs a clean install, has said that it's activated automatically. So the answer would seem to be, you need to do nothing.

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    Re: How to clean install Windows 10 from a USB drive

    I have the DVD burnt here but having spent allday sorting out a clean 7 install after it locked my drive I am a bit dubious on whether to try it again

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