Windows 8 Upgrade: clean install possible?
Microsoft is pushing the Windows 8 Upgrade offers ever since Windows 8 got released a day ago. In fact, you only can buy upgrades on Microsoft Store, if you want a retail copy, you need to buy it elsewhere right now as Microsoft itself is not making those available. The promotions the company is currently running are highly attractive, starting at $39.99 for a Windows 8 Pro upgrade license. What's not clear at all is whether you can do a clean install using the upgrade media or not.
Microsoft's official stance is that you can't, stating that "customers must be running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, or windows 7" to install Windows 8 Pro update. The company furthermore notes under "purchasing the upgrade" that if customers upgrading from a Windows 8 Pro upgrade DVD must have an eligible version of Windows running on the PC to begin the upgrade.
Reports on various tech blogs on the other hand seem to indicate that there is more to it than Microsoft wants to admit. Some report that you can do a clean install using a downloaded upgrade copy of Windows 8 Pro that you have burned to DVD or copied on an USB Flash Drive.
While the authors of the articles state that they were able to do a clean install, some readers noted that the operating system would not activate after the installation throwing error code 0x8007007B instead.
The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installation
Part of the confusion may be caused by the definition of clean install. Most see a clean install as an installation on a blank hard drive, while some may see it as an option to keep no files from a previous operating system.The following questions need to be addressed:
- Can you use a Windows 8 Pro Upgrade license to install and activate the operating system on a PC with no prior version of Windows?
- Is there a difference between using the Windows Upgrade Assistant to purchase, download and install the copy of Windows, or burning it to DVD or moving it to an USB Flash Drive to install the operating system from the media?
- Do you need an activated version of Windows on the PC to run the upgrade?
I can answer the second and third question at the moment. When you use the Upgrade Assistant to install Windows 8 on the PC it is running, it automatically embeds the product key on the system, while you are required to enter the product key during installation when you create a DVD or USB copy.
According to Microsoft, the PC you want to install the Windows 8 upgrade on needs traces of an old operating system that is eligible for the upgrade. While you can still install Windows 8 on the system, it won't activate otherwise as no previous version of Windows has been found by the installer running on it.
It still feels strange that some users were able to install and activate Windows 8 Upgrade in a clean environment. Caschy for instance was able to install the operating system in a new virtual machine environment without issues, while others who tried the same were not able to do just that. I'm not sure what to make of this at this point in time.
Activate Windows 8 Pro Upgrade
Windows 8 users who noticed that the operating system can't be activated after the installation may want to try the following workaround that worked to activate when installing Windows 8 using an upgrade on a clean PC.
- Open regedit by pressing Windows-q, entering regedit and selecting the result from the list of hits.
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
- Change MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0
- Go back to the start screen and enter cmd there.
- Right-click Command Prompt and select to run it as administrator.
- Type slmgr /rearm on the command line and hit enter.
- Reboot Windows now.
- Run the activation utility afterwards, enter your product key to activate Windows.
I'm interested in your Windows 8 installation experience. How did you install the operating system and what was your experience? Did you run into any issues?
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What mental age of reader are you targeting with the first sentence? 10?
Why not write an article on how to *avoid* upgrading from W10 to W11. Analogous to those like me who avoided upgrading from 7 to 10 for as long as possible.
If your paymaster Microsoft permits it, of course.
5. Rufus
6. Ventoy
PS. I hate reading these “SEO optimized” articles.
I used Rufus to create an installer for a 6th gen intel i5 that had MBR. It upgraded using Setup. No issues except for Win 11 always prompting me to replace my local account. Still using Win 10 Pro on all my other PCs to avoid the bullying.
bit pointless to upgrade for the sake of upgrading as you never know when you’ll get locked out because ms might suddenly not provide updates to unsupported systems.
ps…. time travelling?
written. Jan 15, 2023
Updated • Jan 13, 2023
This happens when you schedule a post in WordPress and update it before setting the publication date.
Anyone willing to downgrade to this awful OS must like inflicting themselves with harm.
I have become convinced now that anybody who has no qualms with using Windows 11/10 must fit into one of the following brackets:
1) Too young to remember a time before W10 and W11 (doesn’t know better)
2) Wants to play the latest games on their PC above anything else (or deeply needs some software which already dropped W7 support)
3) Doesn’t know too much about how computers work, worried that they’d be absolutely lost and in trouble without the “”latest security””
4) Microsoft apologist that tries to justify that the latest “features” and “changes” are actually a good thing, that improve Windows
5) Uses their computer to do a bare minimum of like 3 different things, browse web, check emails, etc, so really doesn’t fuss
Obviously that doesn’t cover everyone, there’s also the category that:
6) Actually liked W7 more than 10, and held out as long as possible before switching, begrudgingly uses 10 now
Have I missed any group off this list?
You have missed in this group just about any professional user that uses business software like CAD programs or ERP Programs which are 99% of all professional users from this list.
Linux doesn’t help anyone who is not a linux kid and apple is just a fancy facebook machine.
Microsoft has removed KB5029351 update
only from windows update though
KB5029351 is still available from the ms update catalog site
1. This update is labaled as PREVIEW if it causes issues to unintelligent people, then they shouldn’t have allowed Preview updates ot install.
2. I have installed it in a 11 years old computer, and no problems at all.
3. Making a big drama over a bluescreen for an updated labeled as preview is ridiculous.
This is probably another BS internet drama where people ran programs and scripts that modified the registry until they broke Windows, just for removing stuff that they weren’t even using just for the sake of it.
Maybe people should stop playing geeks and actually either use Windows 10 or Windows 11, but don’t try to modify things just for the sake of it.
Sometimes removing or stopping things (like defender is a perfect example) only need intelligence, not scripts or 3rd party programs that might mess with windows.
Windows 11 was a pointless release, it was just created because some of the Windows team wanted to boost sales with some sort of new and improved Windows 10. Instead, Microsoft cannot support one version well let alone two.
Windows 11 is the worst ugly shame by Microsoft ever. They should release with every new W11 version a complete free version of Starallback inside just to make this sh** OS functionally again.
motherboard maker MSI has recently released a statement regarding the “unsupported processor” blue screen error for their boards using Intel 600/700 series chipsets & to avoid the KB5029351 Win11 update:
https://www.msi.com/news/detail/MSI-On–UNSUPPORTED-PROCESSOR–Error-Message-of-Windows-11-Update-KB5029351-Preview-142215
check out the following recent articles:
Neowin – Microsoft puts little blame on its Windows update after UNSUPPORTED PROCESSOR BSOD bug:
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-puts-little-blame-on-its-windows-update-after-unsupported-processor-bsod-bug/
BleepingComputer – Microsoft blames ‘unsupported processor’ blue screens on OEM vendors:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-blames-unsupported-processor-blue-screens-on-oem-vendors/
While there may be changes or updates to the Windows 10 Store for Business and Education in the future, it is premature to conclude that it will be discontinued based solely on rumors.
My advice, I left win 15 years ago. Now I’m a happy linux user (linuxmint) but there is Centos, Fedora, Ubuntu depending on your needs.
motherboard maker MSI has recently released new BIOS/firmware updates for their Intel 600 & 700 series motherboards to fix the “UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR” problem (Sept. 6):
https://www.msi.com/news/detail/Updated-BIOS-fixes-Error-Message–UNSUPPORTED-PROCESSOR–caused-BSOD-on-MSI-s-Intel-700-and-600-Series-Motherboards-142277
I try to disable the Diagnostics Tracking Service (Connected Devices Platform User Services) but it wont let me disable it, any help will be greatly appreciated.
Tank you for your help