I have an addendum to this for future searchers. Too often people who get their problem solved never post back:

I D/L a good ISO, as my first was buggy, installed it in about 15 minutes. All Windows tweaks, settings, preferences, my User folder and my wallpaper collection were kept :-D and it didn't even ask for my Product Key. That's why it installed so fast.

Then I used Dism++ to analyze my updates and see which are needed (minus the telemetry and Win10 nags.)