Just upgraded to Windows10 - might help someone o

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Deadeye 14 Jan 2020

I was on W7.

I used the porcess heer, about 2/3rds of the way down (upgrade from 7/8):

https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-free-upgrade-2018/

I thought I'd need the W7 product key, so I used this (with the "full install support" link below the feedback section).  As it turned out, Iit wasn't asked for:

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

The upgrade took ages (overnight).  There's one choice to make earliy on (an hour or so in), about clean or keep your data.  Then I went to bed after about 4 hours and this morning it was done and asking me questions about whether I wanted targeted advertising.

So, slow, but easy and free.

My other box wouldn't go - apparently it thinks the wireless card is too old.  I'm going to do it on hardwire today with the card removed, but it may not like some other stuff too I guess.

Both machines had a legitimate W7 licence to start.

1
 krikoman 14 Jan 2020
In reply to Deadeye:

I take it you lose all your installed apps?

Deadeye 14 Jan 2020
In reply to krikoman:

Nope - the first chopice is whether to keep them and data.  Everything works exactly as before (bookmarks, saved passwords etc etc, installed programs, backup routines...

I hate to say it, but I was actually impressed.  I was braced for a horrorshow

 Snyggapa 14 Jan 2020
In reply to Deadeye:

We have done about 40 machines in our office, I expected 40 horror shows but it's been pretty painless to be honest. 

If I were a betting man I would have lost a lot of money 

 Jamie Wakeham 14 Jan 2020
In reply to krikoman:

As I understand it, the reason the upgrade path takes so long is that it's working around keeping all your currently installed apps and data.

I went for the clean install route recently; obviously I had to back up all my data to external drives and I will need to re-install apps as I need them.  If anyone wants to follow that process: I downloaded the Windows 10 ISO from here https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10 to an empty USB drive - this did need a functioning product key, but they accepted my old Win7 key.

From there, just put the USB drive into the computer, interrupt bootup (usually this is pressing F12 as it starts up), tell it to boot from the USB, and it does it all for you.  Took less than an hour in total; I was ready for a prolonged process and was quite surprised to see it done so quickly!

 krikoman 14 Jan 2020
In reply to Deadeye:

> Nope - the first chopice is whether to keep them and data.  Everything works exactly as before (bookmarks, saved passwords etc etc, installed programs, backup routines...

> I hate to say it, but I was actually impressed.  I was braced for a horrorshow


Wow! I might give it a go

 krikoman 15 Jan 2020
In reply to Deadeye:

Has anyone done this with VMworkstation installed on the host machine?

I've ordered an SSD and am going image mine then try an upgrade, fingers crossed.

 The Lemming 15 Jan 2020
In reply to krikoman:

> Wow! I might give it a go


I've upgraded Window's 7 with legit and "cough" legit Product Keys. Never had a single problem. Only last week, a mate of mine upgraded his Window's 7 to 10 without a hitch.

Not looking forward to the next Windows OS upgrade, as I've heard rumours that they are going to go down the renting route rather than buying the OS outright.

1
 Neil Williams 15 Jan 2020
In reply to The Lemming:

> Not looking forward to the next Windows OS upgrade, as I've heard rumours that they are going to go down the renting route rather than buying the OS outright.

I'm not sure how much I object to that as it does mean you are consistently on the latest version without fixed costs to upgrade.  But if I did object there's always Linux.

 john arran 15 Jan 2020
In reply to Deadeye:

A word of caution:

I upgraded a reasonably high-spec laptop from 7 to 10, opting to keep apps and data, and the resulting installation was slow to the point of unusable. I googled many reasons why people had experienced similar but all of the suggested fixes had no effect. I'm pretty sure it was because the laptop had a small SSD boot/OS core and a larger hard disk, and somehow I think it had not maintained the disk priority properly and appeared to be hunting for an age after every click.

I finally gave up on it and did a clean 10 installation but lost all apps and data (which I'd mostly backed up anyway so wasn't critical).

Biggest issue was the huge waste of my time in trying to get the first version to work before accepting defeat.

In reply to john arran:

My experience of upgrading an atom-based all-in-one, way back in late 2016, was that the install wasn't toooo bad. But the result was incredibly sluggish, taking lots of CPU doing nothing. I quickly gave up, and used the automated reversion to Win7, which took just 15 minutes.

At the time, I didn't have any active virus checking running, just Defender. Having recently installed Microsoft Security Essentials, I suspect that the sluggish performance was the Win10 implementation of MSE, which, as I understand it, is installed by default. So my comparison at the time was probably unfair.

I did a last (allegedly) update of my Windows 7 machines last night. Ironically, MSE running on one of them takes up so much resource (it's only got 1GB of RAM), that Windows update can't install the monthly security update, and MSE cannot install it's new security definitions. So the thing that's supposed to be protecting my security is actually damaging my security... May have to uninstall MSE (if I can get it to let me), so I can do the final WU.

 krikoman 15 Jan 2020
In reply to The Lemming:

Linux, will be even better developed by then though, so maybe I can use that and keep a VM for Windows only stuff.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Oh, and this was one of the first things I did when I tried Win10 on my desktop:

https://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-windows-10s-built-in-apps...


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