Windows 10 - free upgrade to those with PC using Windows 7 or 8

[robko]

Originally Posted by danwdoo

You should be able to use the key so long as the edition matches (i.e home or pro). Rolling back is simple and easy. I've done it on one problem machine and it was simple and fast. Having the drivers in advance can be handy. Otherwise the upgrade process is pretty straight forward.

And watch that you get the correct version - 32 bit or 64 bit. The Surface should have been 64 bit and as long as your laptop is 64 bit, home edition you'll be good. If your laptop is 32 bit, then you need a different download.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Me too. I'm noticing a considerable increase in time from login 'til desktop.

I find even after the desktop loads alot of drivers still have not loaded yet. So It's taking up to 5 minutes before I can use my laptop after desktop appears. I realize by upgrading early I am beta tester and Samsung seems to be on the ball getting updates out for Windows 10 so I expect it to get better than Windows 8.1

So far I like the Start Menu changes the most and Cortana because I'm so use to using Okay Google on my tablets.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by danwdoo

Quite. I've been comfortably using network trace tools for many years. Again, updates and safe browsing practices (and running as a non-admin user!) mitigate the overwhelming majority of issues. I'm not saying Defender is the only or best choice, just that Norton is a poor one based on system performance hits (not effectiveness). Also many "Windows" problems can be traced to AV software such as Norton (and some others) that try to do to much and insert themselves into too many functions of the OS. As stated earlier, why trust software that can't even uninstall itself properly half the time?

OK, most of the time when people say this, they just mean they don't have any obvious adware, and don't understand anything about modern viruses. Sounds like you get it That said, some AV is a necessity now though, and Defender is terrible now (I stand by this as pretty much all third-party tests show it sucks now).

I had the problem some others have complained about looping updates failing to install, did some googling, found the fix here:

https://superuser.com/questions/9483...4bc2feb37492a7

When I first installed, it assigned my microsoft a short username ("green"). I ended up creating a local account, deleting the first account, and then linking my ms account, to fix the (IMO) broken username.

Apparently the update is hiccuping on the SID of the first username still in the registry. Removed and all installed as normal.

So if you've removed any users in the control panel / user account control area and you're having the update failure problem, try this fix.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Hmmm, I'm always a bit skittish at running those command line things as well....

I'm not sure what to suggest at this point.

One thing....I'm not sure what you mean by you ran it using MagicDisc. You shouldn't need anything to run the 'setup.exe' file from the DVD.

MagicDisc creates a virtual drive so the ISO just appears as another drive on your system, treating it like a DVD without actually having to burn one. Never given me issues before but you've made me think, perhaps I will burn an actual DVD and try again.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by orlok

MagicDisc creates a virtual drive so the ISO just appears as another drive on your system, treating it like a DVD without actually having to burn one. Never given me issues before but you've made me think, perhaps I will burn an actual DVD and try again.

Yes.



.

[JimmyR]

I have two PCs with Windows 7 (Family Pack for three computers). Upgraded one to Win 10 a few days ago and everything went smoothly. My second PC I upgraded via Windows Update. The upgrade went well except that it will not activate: Error code 0xC004C003

I called Microsoft and was told to wait for 24-48 hours. Apparently there are a lot of problems with activation.

I really like Windows 10. It runs reasonably well on my old Asus netbook (900ha) and great on my desktop--aside from the activation issue.

I intended to do the free upgrade and then revert back to 7 so I could do a clean install of 10 and dual boot. However, the upgrade went so well and everything is working great, I don't really need to keep 7. Hopefully the activation issue gets sorted.

[DustyDisks]

Just for a grin, just to have the option and play a tad. I used the media creation tool to setup one of my usb thumb drives, thinking if something happened in the future I could use the thumb drive as an alternate to my external drive if my laptops HD died.

The process seemed to go fine, but later when I wanted to take a peek at what files were loaded into the thumb drive.......Gasp ! My system would not recognize the thumb drive as media! In device manager under drives it did show correctly, but that was all. It was a 64gb Transcend and as far as I can tell it was totally bricked. In drive management the drive did not exist, nor any other partition software tool could see it, have tried every way that I could find to fix it.

Have not a clue on what happened to it, but what ever it was, it was effective in killing that thumb drive.

Been looking for an excuse to buy a larger thumb drive anyway and now it seems I have one!

[Yolina]

Originally Posted by DustyDisks

Been looking for an excuse to buy a larger thumb drive anyway and now it seems I have one!

Since when is an excuse needed to buy new thumb drives?

[dwig]

Originally Posted by orlok

MagicDisc creates a virtual drive so the ISO just appears as another drive on your system, treating it like a DVD without actually having to burn one. Never given me issues before but you've made me think, perhaps I will burn an actual DVD and try again.

MagicDisc, and other of that ilk, do work very well, but the virtual DVD that they "create" doesn't survive when the system restarts. The Win10 upgrade triggers several restarts meaning that the MagicDisc's virtual DVD won't be they after the first restart.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DustyDisks

Just for a grin, just to have the option and play a tad. I used the media creation tool to setup one of my usb thumb drives, thinking if something happened in the future I could use the thumb drive as an alternate to my external drive if my laptops HD died.

The process seemed to go fine, but later when I wanted to take a peek at what files were loaded into the thumb drive.......Gasp ! My system would not recognize the thumb drive as media! In device manager under drives it did show correctly, but that was all. It was a 64gb Transcend and as far as I can tell it was totally bricked. In drive management the drive did not exist, nor any other partition software tool could see it, have tried every way that I could find to fix it.

Have not a clue on what happened to it, but what ever it was, it was effective in killing that thumb drive.

Been looking for an excuse to buy a larger thumb drive anyway and now it seems I have one!

Yep, I used that excuse too and 'splurged' for a three-pack of sandisk 16Gb from Costco for $20
Used a couple of my existing 8GB to create the image for W10 Home and Pro.

[kennyc]

FYI. Just tested my Wacom Intuos 4 tablet and my Painter 11 application. Woo-Hoo! All is good!

The laptop has updated Antivirus defs and a few other things since reinstalling so it seems to be working fine now.

Everything looking good here and I'm quite happy with it all .... except I sure wish they had given me a free copy of Office with it.

P.S. I also burned DVDs for each version.

[Cosimo]

I didn't sign up for the upgrade until last weekend. It arrived on Thursday, and installed without any issues. The only problem was lack of hard drive space because the hard drive is a small ssd. Yesterday I learned about the reset function and was able to do a clean install and that resolved it.

Start up is at least as fast as it always was and the battery seems to last longer. The only oddities I've experienced was that page scrolling with the trackpad wasn't working after the first install and it seems to take a few seconds longer to shut down.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by dwig

MagicDisc, and other of that ilk, do work very well, but the virtual DVD that they "create" doesn't survive when the system restarts. The Win10 upgrade triggers several restarts meaning that the MagicDisc's virtual DVD won't be they after the first restart.

That's what I thought as well, but it did get 96% of the way through the install before it hung, having rebooted a couple of times by then. What I think might have happened is that after the first reboot it carried on from my downloaded version of the Windows 10 update, which I have in place, but hadn't tried to load from.

Anyway, the third time was the charm, and I now have a fully functioning Windows 10 environment . The changes I made were:

- create a DVD and install from that
- remove my network cable until the install was complete
- disabled all my startup programs
- uninstalled my AV (ESET), not just disabled it

The only glitch was that it wouldn't accept my Windows Validation key, and I had to skip this part. Not sure if that will come back and bite me. The key is genuine, but was bought from an educational retailer (at a discount) as I installed this version of Win 7 Ultimate for my daughter.

Now having fun trawling around the new environment, and trying to find where Microsoft have hidden all those things we love from previous versions (like the Home button in Edge - why would they disable that, then hide the option to turn it back on two or three levels down in the Settings?).

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by orlok

The only glitch was that it wouldn't accept my Windows Validation key, and I had to skip this part. Not sure if that will come back and bite me. The key is genuine, but was bought from an educational retailer (at a discount) as I installed this version of Win 7 Ultimate for my daughter.

Repeating some information from earlier in this long thread: Keys for prior versions of Windows cannot be used to activate Windows 10. You need to perform an upgrade on an already activated Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 installation and Microsoft will activate the upgraded system automatically. You don't need and shouldn't use a product key during this process.

[theducks]

Orlok
you probably made the same error I did: You booted the DVD.
The DVD is dual mode. Fresh install needs a W10 key.

I ran Belarc adviser and have now hard copy record of the new W10 key tucked in with the DVD in case I ever need to do a clean instal.