[SOLVED] How many times can I reinstall Windows 10 in the same system?

[jon96789]

My Win 10 PC is having weird issues. I did a Windows repair a month ago which wiped all the apps and restored the OS to a bare-bones system, keeping my settings. But the OS is still acting a bit flaky. When I insert any USB storage device into the USB port, it is recognized by the OS (it makes the device plugged in sound) and the USB icon shows in the systray. But the storage device does not appear in File Explorer or in Device Manager.

I thinking of doing a full wipe and do a complete fresh install from scratch, including repartitioning the boot drive. Will Windows require a new license for the reinstall (I am not changing any hardware). What about MS Office? Note that I used only local accounts on my build, I did not use a Microsoft cloud account. Or do you have any other suggestions?

Also, my old case has four USB ports, two USB 2.0 and two USB 1.0 ports. All four ports used to work but now only the two USB 2.0 ports work, the USB 1.0 ports are dead.

Configuration:

ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair Hero VIII AM$ motherboard
Corsair Obsidian 750D case
Corsair H115i Platinum RGB AIO cooler
Corsair CX750M Power Supply
Corsair 8 GB 3200 MHz DDR4 LPX RAM x 4
Corsair QL140 aRGBfans x 5
Corsair Commander XT hub
AMD 5950X CPU
MSi NVidia RTX2070 GPU
Samsung EVO 970 1TB m.2 SSD

 

[USAFRet]

There is no definitive "this many".
Once a day, it will eventually flag as 'too many'.

We see people here who do a full reinstall once a month, 'just because'. (silly people)

Reinstall, you'll be fine.
Only ONE drive connected, of course.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

if this is an OEM install, included with the purchase of the system, then you would need an install disk from the manufacturer to reinstall and use.

if this is a license registered to your MS account you can reinstall as many times as needed on this particular hardware.

 

[jon96789]

This is not a pre-built so thanks...

 

[jon96789]

Well, I tried doing a complete reinstall of Windows. I zeroed out the partitions on the boot drive to do a new install and reinstalled all my apps from scratch. it took all day reconfiguring it. After I finished the install, I was sure to make an image of the boot drive after all the apps and settings were configured.

 

[Colif]

We see people here who do a full reinstall once a month, 'just because'. (silly people)

I wonder if they at least clever enough to include version updates in their schedule or some months they get 2 new installs.