Like I said though, Microsoft told me on the phone that that method is absolutely NOT supposed to work. Upgrading is the only way, a clean install will not activate they said. Who fucking knows. Laptop is back to a fresh Win7 install, but now of course it doesn't seem to want to upgrade to Win10 through Windows update. It's all up to date as far as Win7 goes, and further checks for updates don't show the Win10 upgrade as yet, nor is there the app in the notification tray. I tried a method that's supposed to force it (
How to force Windows to start downloading the Windows 10 update files | VentureBeat | Business | by Jeff Grubb Emil Protalinski), but that doesn't work, it just says I'm up to date. I tried a troubleshooter download directly from Microsoft, and the result was that my computer is supposedly NOT up to date. And the USB stick I created for the clean install absolutely will not do an upgrade installation. If I boot with it, and then pick upgrade, it tells me to boot to Windows 7 and run it from there. When I do run it from inside Win7, it wants a product key with no way to skip it (Win7 key doesn't work, of course). I'm in this absolutely fucking retarded circle jerk right now, and I'm the cracker.
That being said, the install on a brand new computer I put together yesterday went absolutely flawlessly. I haven't bought a key for it yet, but otherwise it was probably the easiest build and install I've ever done, even with an Intel 750 SSD.
Is the best place to get a Win10 key just from the MS Store?