Can I Reinstall Windows 10 Once I Upgrade?

[Corrine]

This is a question a lot of people have been wanting an answer to and now we have it. The answer was provided by Microsoft employee and Forum Moderator at Can I reinstall Windows 10 once I upgrade?:

Yes. Once you upgrade to Windows 10 successfully using the free upgrade offer, you will be able to clean reinstall Windows 10 on the same device during and after the free upgrade offer period without having to purchase Windows 10 or having to go back to the prior version of Windows that you upgraded from.

 

[Digerati]

It sure seems like you may have to jump through some hoops to reinstall Windows 10 if you go through the upgrade path. This clearly emphasizes the need to do an image backup once you complete the upgrade. And I recommend once you complete the image backup, you swap out your boot drive with a spare drive and restore that image backup to the spare, then verify it works.

 

[Corrine]

Also stated here by Sidd of Microsoft in reply to another question:

Not clear on what a "clean reinstall" is. So if I delete the OS partition on the hard drive and want to start all over with installing windows 10 from the bios mostly likely from a disc or usb drive.. will I be able to do that? Are we going to get a windows 10 ISO for later install like I have for my current windows OS?

Yes, it will be possible to download Windows media.

 

[Aura]

I hope that it'll be possible to download a clean installation media for Windows 10. Otherwise, people that doesn't want the KB3035583 couldn't really upgrade to Windows 10 without downloading it and using GWX.exe.

 

[Corrine]

See Ed Bott's article, How to turn your Windows 10 upgrade files into an ISO disk image

After the upgrade is complete, you can create an ISO file from the cached upgrade files.

Note at the end:

In the next installment of this series, I will go into more detail about the range of installation options you have, with or without this ISO file.