The Windows 10 upgrade stores your machine ID on Microsofts servers. This means that if you decide to do a clean install at a later point in time, you do not have to type in any product key and that you can just skip it during installation. After installing it will then activate itself (This may take a while.. Took a few hours and some restarts for me).
I actually decided to test this yesterday when installing, so when I was finished upgrading to Windows 10 I extracted the new product key from my registry and then I tried to do a clean install using that key. Sadly the Windows 10 installer doesn't recognize that key as valid.
In short: It doesn't look like there's any "magic" way to circumvent the upgrade method on the first install, since you need to get your machine ID up on Microsofts servers to be able to activate your Windows 10 installation.
Are you sure you need to get all the updates for Windows 7 first? On my laptop I was able to upgrade to Windows 10 directly on top of a fresh Windows 8 install.
Update:
You could try to contact Microsofts support. Apparently a few people have had success getting them to upgrade your existing key to a Windows 10 key - Haven't tried it myself though so I can't confirm it.
The tool can be only used to download Windows 10 Home/Pro (N)/Singe Language Editions and not the Education.
Get the ISO via MSDNAA/Dreamspark or wait until you get the Update offered via Windows Update. Microsoft releases the updates in waves to make sure the servers are not hammered too much.
Best Answer
You can use the
dism
tool to query the ISO for version indices and then install the one you want. I have done this in the past directly to a newly partitioned secondary HDD (the drive then gets deployed to a new machine) via a mounted ISO, but it can also be done during a normal clean install (I think shift+f10).There are a number of steps, but the essential commands:
diskpart
tolist vol
(make a note of the proper disk)exit
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\Sources\install.wim
(replaceD:
with proper letter for the ISO location..wim
may need to be.esd
)This enumerates the possible indices of verisons. Note the one you have the proper key for.
dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:D:\Sources\install.wim /index:1 /ApplyDir:G:\
(again, check theD:
andG:
locations to ensure they are the correct ISO and destination partitions and update the index identifier)G:\Windows\System32\bcdboot G:\Windows
to make the partition bootable.I would strongly suggest you use these commands as a stepping stone for doing a google search for a tutorial such as: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/84331-apply-windows-image-using-dism-instead-clean-install.html