Just after a some advice.

My installation of windows 10 started doing something a bit odd a while back and I've been unable to fix it. It wouldn't install Visual Studio or SQL Server. Other products install fine but MS, no dice. I managed to narrow it down to something to do with permissions on an application data directory MS use and got VS to install but nothing has worked for SQL Server. Long story short, I've given up and am planning to wipe and reinstall windows.

My problem is that this installation is an old install, upgraded many times, and I can't even remember where it started out. From memory I think it was originally Vista but I've long since lost the install disk and the license key along with it. From some admittedly brief research on the net it sounds like I can probably recover my license key from windows before I wipe it but I'm not 100% sure how. Any advice on that front would help.

Also, some of my research turned up that I might not need a license key as it can, apparently, be tied to my hardware. In which case a reinstall will just activate automatically. Can anyone confirm that and how would I know if it applies to my machine?

I'm assuming the actual software is freely downloadable and the license is the bit MS charge for. Is that correct?

Last but not least, can anyone identify any other potential problems I' going to run into?

I should say, I'm really not a systems guy. I code. I like to code. But OS's leave me cold and I'm basically a blazing incompetent so please try not to blind me with jargon



edit>Hmmm, I just googled and a new copy would only cost £20 or so. Maybe that would be easier.