Thanks for your replies.
The reason I asked is that I have a laptop and pc, both running Win 7 32 bit. I upgraded both to Win 8 32 bit, and they ran perfectly. I then felt Win 8 64 bit was the way to go so the laptop was reinstalled with a clean install to Win 8 64 bit. The disc was for formatted within the windows upgrade process. It all went well and activated automatically WITHOUT a refresh.
I then proceeded with the PC. All went well and it activated as before. However I had trouble with the wireless adapter and the system locked up. No way could I retrieve it and I also noticed that the PC was now deactivated.
I considered a refresh but as I had very few programs installed I did another clean install, this time I formatted the disc with an external utility before installing the program.
Guess what, it would not activate and was saying that the key was in use on another machine. It also would not allow activation by phone, telling me to buy another key.
Time to call in Microsoft Support who transferred me to India.
They took control of my PC and an hour and three quarters later it was activated, which they did by telephone.
I noticed at one point a label which said that the key entered could only be used for an upgrade.
However it has now been working correctly for a couple of days with no problems, as has the laptop.
The problem with the wireless adapter was solved by using an earlier driver and running in compatibility mode for Windows 7.
Although it is all running now and I have imaged the drive I am concerned that if I have a similar scenario in the future I will be able to do another clean install, this time following the tutorial of 'BRINKS', and still have a successful outcome.
What would we do without people like him.
Comments,good or bad, welcome.