Note: You can run Windows 10 without activation at no financial cost. If you have more than one storage drive, cancel the install and remove all drives save for the one designation (by you) as the OS drive and restart the install. Start the installation of Windows 10 and format ALL drives in your system. Use the Windows 10 Media Creation tool to create a new Install media.īack up your data files (documents, music, videos, bookmarks, e-mails, etc.) to a safe location Of course, this means that all data would be lost. The reason for the 'N' version was to remove some software so embedded in Windows that to restore from a backup would simply fail.ģ) Since attempting a backup from a Windows 10 Pro N backup would likely break your system, only a format and clean install would restore it to functioning. Reinstalling from a backup will break your system. If you are truly running Windows Pro N, then:ġ) Yes. To my knowledge, the only Windows license that is capable of expiring is the Enterprise version when it can no longer reach it's authentication server.