NOTE: This is an important tip for all of your home systems, but it also applies to enterprise systems, particularly if you don’t want them to be dependent on a KMS server, particularly in the case of off-network systems.
There are some tricks to Windows 10 activation, particularly if you want to do a clean install instead of an in-place upgrade.
You must do an in-place upgrade first, then a clean install to properly activate your free upgrade to Windows 10.
Steps:
- Do an in-place upgrade to Windows 10 from the currently activated windows on the system.
- If the currently installed windows is 32bit, then so must be Windows 10
- Make sure that windows 10 is activated.
- This will permanently register the Hardware ID with Microsoft, which will allow Windows 10 to activate on this system anytime in the future without the need to go back to the original copy of windows first.
- Perform a reset or a clean install.
- If you do a clean install, you can now switch from a 32bit Windows 10 to a 64bit Windows 10 if the processor supports it.
- You can also switch from Legacy Boot to UEFI Boot at this point by doing a clean install. Just set UEFI and/or Secure Boot in the BIOS before booting into Windows 10 setup.