I apologise for this stupid post in advance, but I'm unable to move past step 2 in the OP's process. Where am I supposed to get the .iso? There are over a dozen stickies in this forum and none of them contain any kind of FAQ. I assume it's got to be in one of these two threads (https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...1-2-1-208-264-329-pc-20h1-2-vb_release.80763/ and https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...al-build-18362-3-xxx-pc-19h1-2-release.79259/), but ignoring the fact that I have no idea what the garbled mess of numbers mean, again these threads contain dozens of links to god knows what and a thousand acronyms that I've never seen in my life (UUP ESD SVF SFX MCT LP FOD WTF). Back in the days of win 7, you could just grab pretty much any .iso off a torrent, install the system and once activated, run windows update and you had a working system. Now I assume that's no longer the case as the current torrents of win10 are all very old and barely seeded. I would be really grateful if anyone could explain, well, pretty much anything - where does one get a win10 iso and what are the current options for activating it once installed? Again I apologise for this post but I was not able to find this information anywhere on here.
Thank you very much for the response and apologies for more incoming questions. So I assume I could have found that link in the "20H1" thread under downloads as that looks like the latest release? If i get that iso on a bootable USB and install, is there an option to keep old files in a "windows.old" folder, as there was in the W7 install process, or is formatting the whole boot drive the only option? I would be coming from an updated W7 ultimate system that's activated by DAZ loader - is there a version of that tool for W10 or should I run something like kms_vl_all which seems to be the preferred activation method here? And the last question is about windows update - does it still work as it did in W7 or do you need to download and install updates manually, which I assume has something to do with the "UUP file" stuff? Thanks again.
For keeping this as simple as possible, Yes. No need for a bootable USB for upgrades, just extract or mount the ISO in the running windows and run setup.exe from its root. For proper clean installs (by booting from the installmedia) it will never create the windows.old folder because a proper clean install will include a reformatting or repartitioning of the systemdrive. Though when you select the existing windows partition it will create the folder but that's not the proper way for a clean install. This means you are planning to do an upgrade and an upgrade from an activated win 7 to 10 (home, pro +N) will still give you a free HWID for 10. WU = WU, still the same.
I went through all of the steps outlined on p. 1, and when it came time to activate w/Internet, I got the error msg that no product key was found on my device. I double-checked the path C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\ClipSVC\GenuineTicket\, and the .xml file was still there. Did I possibly miss something along the way, or does this method no longer work? Thanks for any input Edit: I just realized there is 1 step I missed that maybe could have affected the license? After installing W7, I didn't update any "missing" drivers, which would possibly could have included the ethernet adapter. I read in another forum here in MDL that an ethernet change could deactivate a W10 activation. Could this be the problem? If so, what's the best way to fix it - start over, or is there something better? Thanks
Thanks. How do I know I'm downloading a legit app, w/out viruses, etc? The one I found is from Github, does that sound right? (not sure if I'm allowed to post links in here).
holly sh$j.. im outdated as hell then.. ok, so this script can make the procedure for the hardware id obsolete? i saw that the script has an option to activate windows 10 with hardwareid, without kms.. is it correct or did i read and dont understand it?