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Thread: Win 8 and clean reinstall down the line

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    Win 8 and clean reinstall down the line

    Okay seen this asked in a few threads but with no answers so thought i would start a new thread to save messing up the others.

    The £25 upgrade does that mean that i need to keep my old os and key for the next few years if i ever have to do a clean install (hard drive goes or motherboard gets a fault so new install)

    Thanks

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    Re: Win 8 and clean reinstall down the line

    Interestingly I went for the retail Win 8 upgrade, Win 7 broke last week, so I wiped the drive and started fresh with Win 8 upgrade this morning. It let me install it fine and accepted my Win 8 key as fine as part of the install. However as I am now in desktop and I try and activate windows it says I cant cause im a naughty boy and didn't install it over Win 7 and it wont activate.

    Trying to find a solution without having to reinstall 7 just to install 8 over it everytime.

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    Re: Win 8 and clean reinstall down the line

    Well if i have to keep my win 7 ultimate lying in a drawer on the off chance, then it looks like no win 8 upgrade for me

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    Re: Win 8 and clean reinstall down the line

    [QUOTE=Kanoe;2680717]Interestingly I went for the retail Win 8 upgrade, Win 7 broke last week, so I wiped the drive and started fresh with Win 8 upgrade this morning. It let me install it fine and accepted my Win 8 key as fine as part of the install. However as I am now in desktop and I try and activate windows it says I cant cause im a naughty boy and didn't install it over Win 7 and it wont activate.

    Trying to find a solution without having to reinstall 7 just to install 8 over it everytime./QUOTE]

    If you buy the upgrade you will need to have the old windows installed to get the upgrade KEY to work. You can still do a clean install of Window 8.

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    Re: Win 8 and clean reinstall down the line

    Exactly what I have found in practise.

    I did spend 45mins on the phone to Microsoft and although they didn't understand my question they very kindly applied some hack so that it accepted my Win8 Pro Upgrade key without having to install 7 first. Infact they didn't even confirm that I had Win7 before applying it, lol. (BTW I do have a legit Win 7 Pro x64 before anyone asks)

    They couldn't 100% confirm if now that the initial activation has taken place that in future I can go from nothing to 8 or I would still have to go from nothing to Win7 to 8.

    Interestingly they did say that there have had a lot of calls today where people have gone from 7 to 8 and some setting is being carried over from 7 and it stops the activation of Win 8 working correctly (but not for everyone).

    Biggest issue so far is that for desktop colours etc they removed the option to change the colour background in windows (eg like the colour of the background in Word and Excel) from white which being dyslexic was very useful having it slightly off white to help me.

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    You can always downgrade if you don't like Windows 8,your old key remains valid even if you upgrade.

    To bypass the upgrade option, in the upgrade assistant, just tick the upgrade using media option and then burning to it to a disk, if it fails to validate after install do a refresh and it shorted out the registration issue I had.

    The price is going up 300% after Jan 31st 2013, so now is the time to get it.

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    Re: Win 8 and clean reinstall down the line

    I did a clean install with my upgrade version because I wanted to use the uefi super fast boot feature. Spent 20 minutes on the phone to MS, an 0800 number, and didn't get asked for my win7 key. i explained i could only use this feature with a clean install and they remotely activated it for me.

    Then 2 weeks ago I got a very cheap deal on another SSD so did a fresh install again with raid0 and it activated straight away! I've made a system image so hopefully no problems in the future..


    @kanoe - I'm dyslexic too mate, don't use off white. Either green or pinky/red will be better! Either one or the other will be suited to you. I got a free assessment when I went back to uni and was given this transparent pink sheet to put over books. It made me read faster but was a pain, especially when scAnning through a book. I look like a muppet but I bought a pair of sunglasses with pink lenses in and they make it lots easier to read..

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