Windows 10 free upgrade

[EL34]

I have upgraded two of my W7 computers this week to W10.
 
Take note that you do not have to wait in line for all the W10 files to download to your computer and then be notified by MS when you are ready to go.

You can upgrade on the spot using Microsoft's media creation tool.
Plus, this tool lets you burn a W10 ISO DVD or USB stick if you want to do that

Download the 32 bit or the 64 bit media creation tool here
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Install the media creation tool
Choose "upgrade this computer now"
Your W10 upgrade starts immediately

One of my W7 desktops took less than 15 minutes to upgrade to W10
Another one took over an hour
It depends on what software you have installed

It looks as though a bunch of windows updates were done during the W10 install
Windows Updates that I had previously hidden
That may have been the reason that the 2nd PC took way longer to update?
I have Office 2007 installed on that PC and had hidden a bunch of updates for office

Notes on which editions you get
If you have a previous home edition, you will get a W10 Home edition

Note that you may be missing some features you need if you upgrade to W10 Home

Better look at the list on this page to see if anything you need will be missing in W10 home

In my case, I need remote desktop
Remote desktop was standard in W7 home
Remote desktop is not included in W10 home

This page shows the features for all the W10 editions
http://www.zdnet.com/article/which-windows-10-editions-get-which-features/

In order for me to get W10 pro, I had to update one W7 computer from W7 Home premium to W7 Pro first
 
The cheapest way for me to get W10 pro was to buy a  W7 pro SP1 upgrade for $59 from Software Plaza.
All you need is the W7 pro activation key that they send you.
For the $59, you get the activation key and you can download a W7 pro ISO file if you want that.
 
Doing it this way is way cheaper than upgrading W10 home to W10 pro.

Here's the link for W7 Pro for $59
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 32/64 bit Full Version SP1
https://softwareplaza.com/microsoft-windows-7-professional-32-64-bit-full-version-sp1-1241.html

To upgrade W7 from home to pro:
In the W7 control panel, use the "Windows Anytime upgrade" option.
Insert your W7 pro activation key and W7 Home updates to pro in less than 10 minutes.
It took 4 minutes on my desktop.

Then activate W7 pro in the control panel/System screen
Now you are all set to get Windows 10 pro when you do the upgrade

[EL34]

After doing the W10 upgrades I turned off a ton of the privacy selections in W10

I also turned off Cortana and made it so Cortana does not start automatically
Even if you turn off Cortana in the control panel, it will still start up automatically and use system resources
You have to rename the Cortana folder it uses so that it cannot start

This web page has some good info on turning off the privacy stuff in W10
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-violates-your-privacy-by-default-heres-how-you-can-protect-yourself/

I don't have any touch screens of plan on doing Cortana voice stuff
I may do that in the future, but for now I have turned off the stuff I don't use in W10

[EL34]

future use

[sluckey]

I've been running Win 10 on my main computer for about a month. I D/L'ed the file and made a bootable USB thumb drive for it so I can install on several machines without having to download for each. I also upgraded a win-8 laptop. I highly recommend updating any win-8 machine. I have mixed feeling about upgrading any win-7 machine.

I also disabled several Win 10 features such as notification center. And I really dislike MS Edge. That ain't the way I want to surf the net! I'm using IE 11 for my default browser, Chrome for a backup browser, and Live Mail for email.

So far the only problems I have encountered are IE 11 freezing randomly (don't know if that's an IE issue or Win 10 issue), and twice when the computer would go to sleep it would not wake up. Had to remove AC power and restart. Never had that issue with Win 7. Oh, and Paint Shop Pro 9 refused to work on my Win 10 machine. I had to buy PSP X7 to fix that. Nice upgrade BTW.

I spent a good bit of time surfing the net to find ways to fine tune Win 10 for the way I work/play. So far I've found the info I needed.

Bottom line, if you have Win 8 just do the upgrade. All the crap that you found aggravating about Win 8 will be fixed. But if you have Win 7, don't expect too much, unless you just love active content on your menus, or want to take a snapshot of a web page and draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa to send to all your facebook friends. IMO, Win 7 is prettier than Win 10.

If you are thinking about the free upgrade, then make up your mind. The free offer expires 08/01/2016 (or a couple days before).

[EL34]

yeah, I love W7

Only had a couple days with W10 so far and not on the machine I use all day long here
The PC in my house is W10 and my recording PC is W10

I was gonna do my Main PC this weekend after making sure the other two machines were fine

W10 seems just as fast as W7 to me
The only reason I am updating is because I don't want to be stuck having to buy W10 down the road

That and the fact that W10 is getting thumbs up from many die hard W7 fans

I waited until now to upgrade  because I was watching to see if there were any major snags with W10

I use paint shop pro 7 still
Seems to be ok on W10

[Ed_Chambley]

I found the IT download to USB drive to work very well.  I had 2 machines that error coded multiple times and would not install.  I did backup on both and restored to original and still no luck.  After a HD format windows 10 installed no problems.

I have reverted all my production machines that are not Mac to Windows 7 PRO.  It is much leaner OS and I do not really care to play on these machines.  I really wish I had a updated version of Windows 2000 for my production machines to tell the truth.

My opinion on Windows 10 is after I formatted and reinstalled everything it is running with no problems.  There are some Regedits to help the machine react quicker which I found annoying until the fixes.  Overall it is fine and there are benefits with touch screen.  I cannot see any benefits over Windows 7 on a standard desktop.

All my apps run fine.  I have not had any compatibility issues using the USB upgrade.  Windows 10 even recognized my smart TV's without adding anything.  Still you cannot control them, but the HDMI port picked up the audio and duplicated the desktop with no issues.

I have a new Surface Tablet with it on there and it makes for a nice toy.

[EL34]

Ok, just ran into my first W10 problem


One of my desktops just lost internet connection
After an hour trying to figure out what the problem was, I found out that my network card did not like the driver that W10 installed

There was a new W10 driver available that I Dl'd and installed from my Mobo makers web site
Everything started working again as soon as the new driver finished installing

I have 3 desktops here and all of them have the same exact Mobo with a built in LAN card
So, I will have to install that same driver in all 3
Glad it happened on one of the desktops in my house

Still waiting to do W10 on my main business desktop
I'll wait a few more days and see how the other two desktops do and if there will be any more issues like the network card driver

[casssax]

I did the free upgrade from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro on two machines that I have. An ASUS laptop with and i5 chip and an old pc with a core2 duo chip.

Generally everything went well. I ended up doing a complete reinstall on the laptop because I had a second boot (ubuntu) and when I made a change to that boot it started giving me problems but after removing the second boot and re-instaling Win10 eveything seems fine.

The only real problem I've noticed is with the automatic updates. I had my laptop become completely unresponsive, I couldn't ctrl-alt-del or move the cursor so I had to do a hard reboot and when the machine started up again it said to wait while updates were installed. I had a similar experience on the PC where things froze and when I restarted it started installing updates.

I think they need to fix it so id doesn't try to install updates while you're doing processor intensive work. There is an option where you can tell  it to schedule when to restart for updates but I don't know yet if this fixes the problem.

I agree that it's not really any better (as far as I can tell) then Win7 on a pc but I figured as long as it's free I'll keep the machines as up to date as possible.

[shooter]

ASUS laptop

I have 2 asus notebooks;
MS sent me a link to verify my computer was up to snuff b4 I went to win10, it failed on my vid driver, asus doesn't have anything newer than what I have so it's win7 for now, which by the sounds of it here is ok.

[Jack_Hester]

I've upgraded three machines.  Two were 64 bit, and one a 32bit.  The 32 bit machine is my home computer, where the other two are shop computers.  I kept the 32 bit machine, as I have lots of 32 bit applications, and really don't trust very new operating systems.  And, whether they'll run my applications. 

I have some software that won't even install, if it doesn't find a 32 bit OS.  However, I haven't tried to see if they would install, using MS's compatibility mode, on Win10.  They won't even begin, on 8, 7, or Vista.  I'll give that a try sometime.  For now, the 32 bit machine is a bit sluggish with 4 Gig of RAM, where I'm running 32 Gig on the other machines. 

Also, off on a tangent, I purchased a memory stick with 64 bit Fedora 22 on it.  Been trying for the past several weeks to download their newest.  You download a 447 Meg file, and the remaining couple of Gig of files are downloaded when you begin the installation process.  It failed so many times, even at 98% completion, one time.  And, it doesn't allow you to continue.  You must begin all over.  It installed in about 15-20 minutes, from the memory stick.  Still a really nice piece of software. 

Jack

[foghornleghorn]

How do I save a thread in Win 10? It was easy in Win 7, just right click and a Save tab displayed. Win 10 doesn't do that, it just gives three useless options, and if you go to the three dots tab there is no save button there either.

There is so much good stuff on this forum, I need to spend more time here, but it's frustrating not being able to save any of it to my desktop.

I have the same problem now on Ampgarage too.

[PRR]

> How do I save a thread in Win 10? It was easy in Win 7, just right click and a Save tab displayed.

MS decided you don't need that. (My kin has been b****ing about general loss of features and interface dumb-down.)

However it *sounds* like a Broswer function, not the operating system.

The default browser in Win10 is "Edge". By most accounts it isn't even half-baked, MUCH work left to do.

"Good"(?) old Internet Explorer "IE" is in Win10 but they make it hard to find. (Do you have a right-click for "open this page in IE"?)

I use FireFox and it runs 99% the same on WinXP, Win7, Win10, and Linux.

I just noticed that Chrome has by far the largest share of the browser market. I use Chrome, it is fine, I'm just more used to FireFox.

[EL34]

How do I save a thread in Win 10? It was easy in Win 7, just right click and a Save tab displayed. Win 10 doesn't do that, it just gives three useless options, and if you go to the three dots tab there is no save button there either.

There is so much good stuff on this forum, I need to spend more time here, but it's frustrating not being able to save any of it to my desktop.

I have the same problem now on Ampgarage too.

I am not sure what you are asking?


Right clicking and choosing Save as saves a complete web page and all it's images and links
Nothing has changed there
I am doing it right now in W10

[foghornleghorn]

I just did it again and it worked this time! No idea what happened but Save As came up in a different window with lots of other options too. I'm baffled but happy.

[Ritchie200]

So what is the consensus on this one?  Getting close to the "not free anymore" date.  I thought I would wait until hopefully all the bugs have been flushed on the update.  I will be updating a Win 7.  I kind of like 7 better than a Win 10 laptop that came with it.  However, I'm sure there are security updates, blah, blah, blah...  I'm also old and don't like change!
I am currently waiting on an OS update from Snow Leopard to El Capitan on my Mac...  I am tired of the constant browser update request pop ups/blank screens and despite the horrific reviews, I am closing my eyes and rolling the dice.  I don't have any non-Apple stuff loaded so hopefully it will be seamless.  Hopefully......  30 more minutes.....
Jim

[EL34]

I converted two desktops a while back

I still have my main desktop that is W7

I still like W7 better, but W10 is not horrible


The automatic updates are about the only thing I don't like about W10
If you get W10 pro, then you have a choice when to restart after an update


W10 home does not give you a choice when to restart

[eleventeen]

I have declined the "upgrade now!" (to WDOs 10) popup about 75 times over the past few months.


Yesterday, apparently for my own good, I turned on the PC and I was notified the upgrade was in progress. Not wanting to shut off the machine and leave it in potentially an impossible state, I let it go. So it installed. Seemed like it went OK, but my second monitor would not work. Device manager could not see my video card, which means since these things are by and large plug and play, that no driver exists for said card. I called the manufacturer of the card and they confirmed there is no driver that works in WDOs 10.


After losing roughly $1500 in the stock market in easy, easy trades when the *#$&$$#^ thing was getting updated, it seemed to work pretty well. But an upgrade would force me to buy a new video card.


I went back to WDOs 7, which I am happy with. This is a very common complaint; that drivers may not exist for your existing hardware, which means they flat out will not work.

[EL34]

W10 had no problem finding drivers for my two desktops
BUT, on one of the machines, it changed to a driver that was having problems

I went to the manufacturer's web site and got the proper driver
Then I went into Computer/System properties/ hardware tab device installation settings


You can set how you want windows to handle drivers

[shooter]

After losing roughly $1500 in the stock market

I did the same without the upgrades, the market taketh, please quit!

[PRR]

> declined the "upgrade now!" (to WDOs 10) popup about 75 times

Argh!! I wish I'd thrown this in before.

GWX Control Panel
http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

Blocks the pop-ups. Blocks any auto-"up"date. Reports if update deamons are running, and if update files have been downloaded.

There is also Steve Gibson's similar Never10. Steve thinks GWX is intrusive. I think he must have some setting wrong: my GWX never appears unless I ask for it. However Steve has found some MS-official interfaces to the "up"grade system, and his stuff is 100% clean machine code, FWIW.

Both free.

[John]

Just installed never10 on both pcs at home, gonna do the same at the shop when I go in.


I'll gladly pay whatever fee it is, years from now when I have to get Win10, when it's fully functional and all bugs have been worked out. Of course by then, they'll have yet another "improved" OS.

[drew]

I have declined the "upgrade now!" (to WDOs 10) popup about 75 times over the past few months.


Yesterday, apparently for my own good, I turned on the PC and I was notified the upgrade was in progress. Not wanting to shut off the machine and leave it in potentially an impossible state, I let it go. So it installed. Seemed like it went OK, but my second monitor would not work. Device manager could not see my video card, which means since these things are by and large plug and play, that no driver exists for said card. I called the manufacturer of the card and they confirmed there is no driver that works in WDOs 10.


After losing roughly $1500 in the stock market in easy, easy trades when the *#$&$$#^ thing was getting updated, it seemed to work pretty well. But an upgrade would force me to buy a new video card.


I went back to WDOs 7, which I am happy with. This is a very common complaint; that drivers may not exist for your existing hardware, which means they flat out will not work.

What chipset is that video card built on?  Did you try getting a driver from nVidia or AMD?  Or try manually installing the Win7 driver?

[pompeiisneaks]

I'm an early adopter, I have a dual screen setup with a hand built pc, and had 0 problems with windows 10 that were severe.  I only had the typical "my machine won't sleep" issues every windows build has had ever. 

~Phil

[guitarsan221]

It free for a reason! I'm a long time windows user, window 1.0 to today windows 10. I have it on my computer because it came with my new computer desktop. Warning!! it the most intrusive OS, and you don't have full control of the apps on it. I had to learn some hacks to remove certain features, and stop information "mining", or "phishing". If you have windows 7 pro, stay with that, or learn how the hack , windows 10. My two cents.