Can I run the Win 10 update tool from a USB on a fresh install of Win 7 with SP1 (no updates just activated)? or do I need to install all the updates onto 7, then do an in-place upgrade using Win Update, then wipe and clean install from usb media?
If you can wait until the "Fall" W10 update which is due shortly, you can use your W7 product key to authenticate in W10 directly.
Can wait for that, do we know how shortly? Bit annoying as I just had 10 on but had to wipe and install 7 as the key didn't work (thought it might have let me swap hardware but it didn't ).
What you can do, as I did at the weekend as I had to reinstall 7 onto a new SSD, is just go to the W10 upgrade page, download the upgrade tool, and wait for it to download and verify.
Fall update is due out in "November", nothing more specific that that but some sites had said it might be out November 10th
I found that once I had upgraded to Windows 10 from 7, I've not needed to enter the key with later re-installs from a USB device. It seems that the key is registered with your hardware and despite not entering a key both times during install, Windows automatically activates itself.
