I just wrote a story for the AskWoody newletter. It’s entitled Why Starting Fresh with Windows 11 Beats an Upgrade. It’s premium content, though, and behind a paywall so you can only see it if you sign up for a subscription. I think that’s worthwhile. but you’ll have to decide for yourself. But in thinking through what’s involved in a clean install, a key early screen demands a valid key to continue (there are workarounds). In this context, I recall that generic or setup keys also work. See the lead-in graphic.

If You Have Them, Generic Keys Speed Clean Install

Generic product keys, aka, default setup keys — may be used during a clean install of Windows. Indeed, the same keys work with 10 and 11. These keys are generic because they won’t activate Windows. But if you’re clean installing on hardware that’s already been granted a digital activation, the Microsoft activation servers should recognize your machine after you get to the desktop, and take care of that automatically.

Here’s a list of generic keys, courtesy of Copilot:

Of course this is an image so a link is helpful to actually grab such 25-char strings. MS doesn’t maintain them in one place, but you can find them at ElevenForum.com through their tutorial “Generic Product Keys to Install or Upgrade Windows 11 Editions.”

Handy to have around, so good stuff indeed. Hats off yet again to the master of Windows mysteries, Shawn Brink (chief MVP and maven for the ElevenForum site). He’s a real treasure for those of us who live in Windows-World. Thanks again, Shawn!