Installing Windows 10 on an old Compaq laptop (CQ61-420US) running Win 7 Home.
My SO's friend Naomi decided she needed a new laptop, because hers "died the death", as reported by my SO. It was passed to me for examination, and it wasn't dead, merely resting. Naomi had managed to totally drain the battery, and that model won't power on, even when plugged into an outlet, without at least some battery. Plugged in and left overnight, it booted normally the next morning.
But Naomi decided she still wanted a new laptop, so I assisted her in the purchase. It's a refurb ASUS unit with Win 8.1, and Naomi was pleased at a price a third of what she expected to pay. (I did some prep work on it, but there is more to do. She hates the Metro interface. This is a job for
Classic Shell...)
The Compaq came to live with me, and will be a travel machine for trips we take together. First step was to uninstall a bunch of unneeded stuff. Second step was an A/V/malware scan. Third step was defragging the HD. Fourth step was installing things that are part of my standard kit, to make life easier when I have to lay hands on it. Fifth step was to add RAM. It came with 3GB, and can take up to 4GB, so a 2GB RAM stick replaced a 1GB stick. Last step, happening now, is an upgrade to Win10. I downloaded the media and created an installer on a flash drive, and am installing from that rather than doing an online upgrade.
My SO already upgraded her Win7 Home laptop, and it was relatively painless. The big issue was figuring out where things were in Win10 because locations changed from Win7. Her main issue is that installing Win10
removes the Microsoft Games collection that comes with Win7. "Hey! Where's Freecell?" Gone...
(MS's FAQ states this will occur, but she didn't read it.) MS wants you to download them from the Microsoft Web Store instead, and they are ad-supported and require purchase to remove the ads. Fortunately, someone patched the Win7/8.1 games to remove the run time OS version check, and packaged the complete set with an installer to let you install which you want. Freecell is back, and the SO is happy. Naomi's new machine gets them next.
There are an assortment of things I plan to say "No, thank you" to in the install process, mostly concerned with what it phones home about. (I am nowhere near as paranoid as a lot of the commentary I've seen regarding this, but do prefer to pick and choose. That's wont happen for a bit yet - it's still copying files and configuring.
Fun, for suitable vales of the term.
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Dennis