When I first saw the title of this thread I thought it was about personal hygiene. I was going to say, wipe completely in order to avoid the dreaded itch!
 
As far as Windows goes, doing a full wipe/re-install is always best, saves long term hassle and has the best results.
 
I also took the late upgrade for accessibility users from a similar article. Although I am an accessibility user (well technically). It's worked fine for me as far as Sonar etc goes, but Chrome crashes all the time if I try to use it on this machine under win 10. However, I didn't take my own advice and did the upgrade from win 7.

35mm
When I first saw the title of this thread I thought it was about personal hygiene. I was going to say, wipe completely in order to avoid the dreaded itch!
 
As far as Windows goes, doing a full wipe/re-install is always best, saves long term hassle and has the best results.
 
I also took the late upgrade for accessibility users from a similar article. Although I am an accessibility user (well technically). It's worked fine for me as far as Sonar etc goes, but Chrome crashes all the time if I try to use it on this machine under win 10. However, I didn't take my own advice and did the upgrade from win 7.

Yup, I wiped my Win 7 desktop and clean installed Win 10.  Smooth as butter.
 
I upgraded my Win 8.1 laptop and got lucky.  Had to do some cleaning up, but it works well.
 
I think the leap in technology from the Win 7 era to Win 10 deserves a clean sweep.  That's an 8 year old technology.  Better to start fresh from that point!  YMMV. 

Wipe and clean install?
What did you do not to have to pay for a Win10 license?

jpetersen
Wipe and clean install?
What did you do not to have to pay for a Win10 license?

You first run the in place upgrade, activate the digital license, download the Windows 10 media creation tool (on USB or DVD), and install again by wipe and clean.  No activation needed the second time around.

abacab
... plus it boots in about 10-15 seconds! 

In Win10 the desktop displays sooner, giving the illusion of being quicker.
But the Wait cursor keeps turning and stuff is still loading.
 
Same with shutdown.
The desktop is black almost immediately.
But the power light stays on for some time.
 
Add it all up and I saw no meaningful difference to when I had Win 7 loaded.

abacab

jpetersen
Wipe and clean install?
What did you do not to have to pay for a Win10 license?

 
You first run the in place upgrade, activate the digital license, download the Windows 10 media creation tool (on USB or DVD), and install again by wipe and clean.  No activation needed the second time around.

Ah! Excellent!
Thank you.

jpetersen
 
Buy a new PC.
Only then will you benefit from faster hardware made for Win10.

I haven't bought a PC in 20 years (except for a couple of laptops).  I have built every one since the first one.  Spec em to last with custom components. 

Ah, yes.
 
I record on-site at clients, so I use laptops.
That limits my options.

abacab
You first run the in place upgrade, activate the digital license, download the Windows 10 media creation tool (on USB or DVD), and install again by wipe and clean.  No activation needed the second time around.

I've done my upgrade now (feeling a bit more confident...) so the first step is done.
Suppose I change out the hard drive for a new SSD instead of wiping my existing HD.
 
Trouble?

jpetersen

abacab
You first run the in place upgrade, activate the digital license, download the Windows 10 media creation tool (on USB or DVD), and install again by wipe and clean.  No activation needed the second time around.

I've done my upgrade now (feeling a bit more confident...) so the first step is done.
Suppose I change out the hard drive for a new SSD instead of wiping my existing HD.
 
Trouble?

I think just maybe to be sure, keep the same hard drive in so you don't have to jump thru any hoops with the Microsoft team regarding activation.  Maybe not necessary, but this eliminates that possibility.  I still haven't figured out how Microsoft profiles your system with the new digital licensing scheme.
 
After the clean install, use an external USB hookup (either cable adapter with power and SATA, or full enclosure) with the new SSD drive.  If it comes with one, use the cloning tool software provided with the new drive to clone the internal HDD drive over to SSD.  Then just swap drives and boot! For the first boot make sure you only have one drive connected, so the BIOS correctly identifies the SSD as the new boot drive.
 
Some folks have their favorite imaging or cloning tools that they may prefer, but I used the Samsung migration tool that came with my Samsung EVO 850, and the process was flawless.  Adding this drive was like buying a whole new computer.  Love it!
http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/ssd-850-evo-2-5-sata-iii-250gb-mz-75e250b-am/