Upgrade without reinstalling

[grogritark]

Hello. I recently purchased a new motherboard for my gaming PC. This has led to me having to buy a new copy of windows. I intend on purchasing a cheap key for windows 8 and then upgrading it to windows 10, but I am just wondering if it is possible to do this without installing 8 on my machine first, in order to save time and unnecessary hassle.

Thank you.

 

[B-man33]

What windows are you running currently? I changed my motherboard on my old rig without having to install windows again, I just had to uninstall the old drivers from the old motherboard and once the new motherboard was in, I had to install the drivers for the new motherboard

 

[ezzy_s]

I believe to take advantage of the free windows 10 upgrade you need to have Windows 7 or 8.1 (after upgrading from Windows 8) on your machine first.

Once you have installed Windows 10 as an upgrade you can do clean install of Windows 10 without going from 8 to 8.1 to 10.

There are ways around this upgrade process but you would need an operating system on your pc in the first place.. so you could do it from windows 8 and skip the upgrade to 8.1 etc.

 

[grogritark]

What windows are you running currently? I changed my motherboard on my old rig without having to install windows again, I just had to uninstall the old drivers from the old motherboard and once the new motherboard was in, I had to install the drivers for the new motherboard

I've upgraded to an Asus Pro Gamer from a really old Foxconn board from about seven years ago. I receive the 'Activate Windows' watermark over everything on my PC and my old windows 10 code doesn't work.

 

[grogritark]

I believe to take advantage of the free windows 10 upgrade you need to have Windows 7 or 8.1 (after upgrading from Windows 8) on your machine first.

Once you have installed Windows 10 as an upgrade you can do clean install of Windows 10 without going from 8 to 8.1 to 10.

There are ways around this upgrade process but you would need an operating system on your pc in the first place.. so you could do it from windows 8 and skip the upgrade to 8.1 etc.

I'm currently running an unregistered version of Windows 10 and have been for the past six months since the upgrade. Is there a way I can remotely upgrade a key then activate it?

 

[ezzy_s]

I believe to take advantage of the free windows 10 upgrade you need to have Windows 7 or 8.1 (after upgrading from Windows 8) on your machine first.

Once you have installed Windows 10 as an upgrade you can do clean install of Windows 10 without going from 8 to 8.1 to 10.

There are ways around this upgrade process but you would need an operating system on your pc in the first place.. so you could do it from windows 8 and skip the upgrade to 8.1 etc.

I'm currently running an unregistered version of Windows 10 and have been for the past six months since the upgrade. Is there a way I can remotely upgrade a key then activate it?

Actually to correct what I said... you can use your windows 8/ 7 key straight out the box (it changed towards the end of last year, although I have not tried it yet). You will need to download the windows 10 installation media yourself from Microsoft website, but you should be able to activate it with the windows 8 key you bought.
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/10/12/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-10565/