How to download Windows 10 Pro to install with thumb drive with a 2nd machine.

[balloonshark]

I have a low powered and small ssd Windows 7 Pro 64 bit machine I want to upgrade to 10. I want to clean install 10 Pro on that machine with a thumb drive however I want to do the 10 download on my Windows 8.1 pro machine. Can someone please tell me how I can make this happen?

 

[nerp]

Click "download tool" here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10/

It will walk you steps to making the USB install drive.

 

[balloonshark]

Click "download tool" here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10/

It will walk you steps to making the USB install drive.

Great! Thank you nerp .

 

[mazeroth]

Sorry to hijack this thread but I want to do the same thing with a 2 year old budget laptop that came with Windows 8. I want to change out the 500GB platter drive and throw a leftover 128GB SSD in there and do a completely fresh install of Windows 10. Possible with the download tool?

 

[vailr]

The MS "download tool" is best used for only obtaining the .iso file.
However: a better solution for using that .iso file for creating a bootable USB thumb drive is a free program called "Rufus".
Although some commercially made machines may preserve the Windows activation code via being stored within the bios, it would still be a good idea to print out the 25 character activation code prior to doing a clean install. Two programs that can reveal that 25-character code are: Belarc Advisor & Produkey.

 

[Elixer]

Sorry to hijack this thread but I want to do the same thing with a 2 year old budget laptop that came with Windows 8. I want to change out the 500GB platter drive and throw a leftover 128GB SSD in there and do a completely fresh install of Windows 10. Possible with the download tool?

If you don't have the key handy, and the programs mentioned above might not find the correct key, you should just install win 10 on the HD, and once activated, you can do a clean install.

 

[balloonshark]

I used the media creation tool to make the usb installer. I used it to clean install Windows 10 from the usb flash drive. After installation was complete I entered my Windows 7 key and it worked fine.

If you don't have you windows 7 key there may be a tool to help you get your key.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I think there were two options you had with the Media Creation Tool. You could click the checkbox and download Win 10 specifically for the machine used in the download, or you could download the equivalent of "network administrator" install files we could remember from XP days -- a comprehensive and generic Win10 install. I chose to do it the first way, making a separate USB install drive for each different machine. I only suspected that the creation tool and download process made some sort of hardware and driver assessment at the time you make that choice. I wouldn't know for sure, otherwise.