Installing Windows 10 on my HP Desktop



With experience to install Windows 10 on couple other computer, I thought the upgrade for my desktop machine would be straightforward. It turned out not to be the case because of the following reasons,
  1. I have replaced the HDD with a 120GB SSD 2 years back.  During the migration, the systems reserved partition (of Windows 8) has been reduced (as I want more usable space) and would not be able to store the files required by Windows 10. 
  2. As the HP is running with an OEM version of Windows 8, the Windows Product ID printed on the Microsoft sticker (on the side of the machine) is meaningless. It would not be recognized as a valid ID during fresh installation.
Once the problems were identified (which has spent me long hours trying out different methods and web search for advice). This is simple and below what I did,
  1. Expand the systems reserve partition to 100MB. There are different tools you could use. I am using the free Partition Manager from MiniTool. 
  2. Instead of fresh install from the Windows 10 image downloaded using the Microsoft Media Creation tools, I run the setup program instead from Windows 10 to perform an upgrade.  Even though this is an upgrade, I have the options not to keep the settings (once you do this, this is like fresh installation).
That's it and upgrade is smooth for me; all devices detected without issue.  I removed the windows 8 system files and other files leftover from my Windows 8 days.  It's clean.

Only remaining complain is why the product ID would not work. I still hoping that I could fine a way to fresh install my desktop. 

References I found useful along the way,
Fix: Windows 10 upgrade couldn’t update the system reserved partition

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