Windows 10 manual upgrade?

[gsavicic]

I had one problem when upgrading. I have made clean win 10 install after formatting drive and making single partition. Just wanted to get rid of android and get more space for windows. After installation windows could not be activated with 8.1 serial. Then i googled for 8.1 win with bing iso file (don't know can i attach link here) made bootable usb drive with rufus and installed it. Windows was activated after installation and then i have upgraded it via media creation tool from Microsoft to windows 10 home edition. Windows is now activated and working ok. If someone else is having same problem, this is solution

[bahnstormer]

That win8.1 w/Bing ISO is probably a third party hacked version - officially the MIcrosoft media creation tool does NOT support the w/Bing version, hence why you couldn't activate after installing that. The official line from Microsoft is that you should go to the manufacturer for w/Bing support.

I did very much the same as you, but when I couldn't find the re-install files from PiPo, I went to a Pipo vendor (Geekbuying.com, I think Badu also has some) and they provide PiPo support, including different build versions for different PiPoX7 versions - I'm guessing you just got lucky that your ISO install was the right version of 8.1 for your key.

The disadvantage/advantage of using the PiPo image files is that it recreates ALL the partitions exactly as they were when they came from the factory... so PRO's: you get drivers and recovery partitions CONS: a lot less free space.

As with your one, I found that once I had the valid (activated!) version of 8.1w/B on the X7, I could run the Microsoft provided upgrade (media creation tool) from within Windows 8.1.

Once that upgrade had been run, drivers added (Finless pack), I was able to activate win10 properly.

Before messing around / configuring anything else, I scrubbed EVERYTHING again: powered off, powered on, F7, booted from the win10 x32 ISO (or USB, I can't recall*), chose "install", deleted ALL partitions and then let it do a clean install on a completely empty drive.

Apparently this leaves you with 21Gb free space, but I didn't check until after I had re-installed the Finless driver pack (minus the graphics driver, but including the latest Intel HD graphics drivers from Intel), then applied any pending Windows updates, without clearing up any space (dropping recovery points / SXS files), I had 19.9Gb free.

BTW - Windows activated as soon as I installed the NIC drivers.

*I have so many win8.1 / win10 USB's and all the ISO's on my Zalman VE-200 (presents a virtual DVD drive) / phone (using DriveDoid).