You might want to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 10 Pro. You might want to clean install Windows 10 on a Mac, either in Boot Camp or virtually. You might want to clean install Windows 10 in a virtual machine (VM). It’s rare, but you might have a newly-built or purchased PC that did not come with any version of Windows. So let’s think about the scenarios where this might be useful. And if you have or have had an MSDN or TechNet subscription, all those old product keys will work too. I mean, who has a bunch of unused retail Windows product keys hanging around anyways? A better way to look at this is that most people simply won’t be able to do this anyway. If your PC was already running Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or any version of Windows 10, a clean install of Windows 10 today will probably activate automatically anyway.Īnd that’s fair. You may think that most people will never need to do this.

And then you can activate that install of Windows 10 using an unused retail Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 product key. What this means is that you can download the Windows 10 Setup media-which is always the latest version, so you’ll get Windows 10 version 1709, or the Fall Creators Update, at the time of this writing-and perform a clean install of the OS on any PC. And as people have asked me about it, on Twitter or via email, I’ve told them that it still works.īut it’s been a while since I’ve written on this topic formally. Since then, I’ve tested this scenario on a very regular basis, probably roughly once a month. Over two years after Microsoft first enabled this functionality, the answer is a resounding yes.Īnd I can think of a number of reasons why one might need to do so.Īs noted, Microsoft first introduced this capability over two years ago, and in doing so it erased what had been one of the early install/activation issues with the then-new Windows 10.Īlmost a year later, I reported that this capability-which was supposed to be temporary, by the way– still worked. Readers routinely ask me whether it’s still possible to clean install Windows 10 with an unused Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 product key.

Win 7 starter