Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[zirk]

Final Reminder for those wishing to Update to Windows 10 for Free from Win7 and 8.1 using the assistive technologies method, the offer finally ends in 14 Days time(31 Dec 2017)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

[TheBoy]

Good spot, I'd missed that

[Mister Rog]

I've not upgraded partly caution and partly laziness, and a lot of both. Still on Win 7 on desktop and one laptop, and 8.1 on another laptop.

Are there any big downsides to doing this ? I mean do i need to have a leg amputated or something ?

[zirk]

I've not upgraded partly caution and partly laziness, and a lot of both. Still on Win 7 on desktop and one laptop, and 8.1 on another laptop.

Are there any big downsides to doing this ? I mean do i need to have a leg amputated or something ?

You dont need to do anything or be disabled etc, just Install it, its been ongoing work around for most people since the official Free Upgrade close.

Download is around 3gb or there about, remember with Win10 once the machine gets activated thats it is always activated for win10 and any updates.

If its was me, due to the times scales now, and I really wanted to keep 7 and 8.2, I would just slap another HD in there, download a Fresh 10 Install get it activated, then revert back to my Drives with 7/8.1 until Im ready to move over, personally win10 works for most its pretty good in my book.

[RobG]

Can you download to a stand alone hard drive connected to your PC Chris?

[zirk]

Can you download to a stand alone hard drive connected to your PC Chris?

Kind off, but it can be a real arse and theres no guarantee it will work properly when win10 does an update.

Secong best option you can do really is to go down the Dual Boot option, ie choose wither on Boot up to use Win7 or Win10, so it installs win10 on another Partition of your hard Drive, its also messy but plenty of How To's on the Web, again a problem some have had doing this is it can mess the original win7 package (or what ever your using) after the 30 Day roll back period as your technically doing an upgrade to 10 rather than a New Win10 Licence install.

Easiest way really Rob, is to Clone your win7/8.1 onto a second Hard drive, then swap out, do a Fresh Win10 Upgrade Install on the Second Hard Drive in the Machine, let it activate itself, then remove the second Hard Drive and slap your original one back in.

You then dont even have to keep the Second Hard Drive (the Win10 one), you can format it use for something else, as any future Win10 Installs or Upgrades on that machine that you do, Windows will recognize the Machine as being Activated and will Auto License itself in the future. 

Either way what ever you decide, or anyone else, I ALWAYS recommend to do a least a complete Back Up or Clone your Original Hard Drive to another Drive and Use the Cloned Drive for messing around, that way youve always got your Original Drive Un Touched when or if it all goes tits up. 

[TheBoy]

I would clone a drive, upgrade that to win10 to get the machine licence, play with it, if you like it REBUILD FROM SCRATCH!!!

If you don't like it, go back to your Win7 image (I think most Win8 users will find W10 more usable)

[Omegatoy]

Gah, worst thing i ever did,w10 is rather awful in my opinion,am now actively looking for a 2nd laptop with win 7,me own fault really, tried persevering with ten so long i could not go back to 7,as windows wipes it asfter a month or so? anyway had it now around a year and still hate it with a passion!

[Gaffers]

Most W10 builds which I have had which were upgrades from W7 have eventually failed in some way.  Those built from scratch work for longer.

[Rods2]

Thanks for the reminder. I think will stay on Win 7 on this laptop, which I plan to replace in 2018 and go to Win 10.

[TheBoy]

Most W10 builds which I have had which were upgrades from W7 have eventually failed in some way.  Those built from scratch work for longer.

That about sums up most OS (and every desktop OS), and major update is never as clean as a fresh install, and carries over a lot of legacy from the old OS.

[TheBoy]

Gah, worst thing i ever did,w10 is rather awful in my opinion,am now actively looking for a 2nd laptop with win 7,me own fault really, tried persevering with ten so long i could not go back to 7,as windows wipes it asfter a month or so? anyway had it now around a year and still hate it with a passion!

In what way are you hating it?  Just because its not Win7, and bits are in different places, or stability type issues?

Be aware that, sadly, Win7 goes out of support in 2yrs, so don't get too attached to it!


My own personal views are the "best" desktop Windows OS ever was 8.1, let down by an awful user interface (which is the bit users obviously interact with, making most thing Win8.1 is crap - but the underlying OS is very good, and supremely stable).  The best user interface was Win7, followed by Vista, with Win10 third.

From a stability angle, Win10 comes near bottom of all the NT based Windows, probably only surpassed on instability by early versions of NT4 Workstation, though in NT4's case, it was 3rd party video drivers (any of them!) that were the cause. Earlier builds of W10 weren't great for stability, particularly on older hardware.  The Anniversary Edition 1607 is a particularly poor build - everyone should really be running Creators Edition 1703 or Creators Fall 1709, both these seem to be an awful lot better than 1607.


For those who grumble they can never find anything, the preferred/default method introduced in Vista is search. Thats unlikely to go away. Want to adjust power saving settings, idea is hit the Windows key and type power and all the power options are displayed. Although the whole control panel thing is a lot cleaner in W10 than, say, W7. Just a shame that the search indexer keeps screwing up on W10, grrr.

[Mister Rog]

Final Reminder for those wishing to Update to Windows 10 for Free from Win7 and 8.1 using the assistive technologies method, the offer finally ends in 14 Days time(31 Dec 2017)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

After reading all the comments, I may just do it. I have an old laptop, which although a few years old has not been used much, but if/when my desktop dies it will be needed. It's Win 7 and won't update due to an MS update cockup up a while back. I hardly use it, so no great loss if it all goes tits up.

[Gaffers]

On 1709 here and I can confirm it's pretty good.  I like W10 on the whole.  I am a little frustrated that it is trying to be too many things at once and the update reminders are annoying at best.  There are rumours that it is going to get its own SSH client soon which will be nice.  Security hardening is a little tricky when integrating with legacy systems (but isn't that always the case?).  A friend of mine is having a right mare with his current client and their upcoming launch of W10.  He had about 300 separate issues to deal with and the client was pushing him to 'risk-accept' most of them.

[Kevin Wood]

Anybody tried upgrading on a dual boot machine?

Not expecting Microsoft crap to respect the fact that it's dual boot, but just wondering how much of a Horlicks I'll have to sort out?

Then again, I only boot this into Win 7 to Tech 2 stuff, so it might be filed under "CBA".

[zirk]

Anybody tried upgrading on a dual boot machine?

Not expecting Microsoft crap to respect the fact that it's dual boot, but just wondering how much of a Horlicks I'll have to sort out?

Then again, I only boot this into Win 7 to Tech 2 stuff, so it might be filed under "CBA".

Win10 will recognise and support Dual Boot, but, it can be a bit hit and miss if your using another WinOS as part of the Dual Boot and are upgrading from that Licence, especially after the 30 day Roll Back period.

It also depends what version of Win10 your slapping on, if you have a choice, the older the better, In theory when youve upgraded to 10 from 7 or 8.1 your previous Licence Expires 1 day after the 30 Days Roll it back option, but it doesnt its still valid, kind of, ie, if youve cloned the original drive and slap that back in its fine, with Dual Boot you need to work backwards to get it to work correctly, ie Upgrade to 10 and get the Licence Activated, then on the Dual Boot start again, Fresh Clean Install of 10,  then install 7 or 8.1 as the second boot option from your OEM or a Bootable Media that you made earlier, that should work although no guarantee it will after a win10 future upgrade as it may see a Licence issue.

Other way is to do the above, ie get 10 Activated and then use a different Licence for the 7 or 8.1 install.

As for Dual Boot win10 and say Linux, no idea, but should be fine though as no Licence issue.

[Kevin Wood]

OK. Will try it if I get bored over the festive season. The other OS is indeed Linux.

[zirk]

When you upgrade and install win10 over air for the firs timet, after Installation keep a copy of the ESD File it creates, then use that for the clean install on Dual Boot if your going down that route, makes it a lot easier, cant remember if the ESB needs to be bootable or not for DB but if needed you can convert the ESD file to a Bootable ISO / USB (ask Google). 

[TheBoy]

Did a dual boot win7/centos machine back in early days of Win10 (might have even been previews), expecting it to wipe out the Linux, but it didn't.  Not tried later Win10 versions.

However, either my knackered laptop has killed TIS, or Win 10 1709 doesn't work with TIS.  Laptop has been rebuilt this morning, just copying TIS back to it (over Wifi ), so will probably know which in an hour or 2...

[TheBoy]

However, either my knackered laptop has killed TIS, or Win 10 1709 doesn't work with TIS.  Laptop has been rebuilt this morning, just copying TIS back to it (over Wifi ), so will probably know which in an hour or 2...

Right, it looks like TIS2000 doesn't work with 1709 then 

[Mister Rog]

Final Reminder for those wishing to Update to Windows 10 for Free from Win7 and 8.1 using the assistive technologies method, the offer finally ends in 14 Days time(31 Dec 2017)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

After reading all the comments, I may just do it. I have an old laptop, which although a few years old has not been used much, but if/when my desktop dies it will be needed. It's Win 7 and won't update due to an MS update cockup up a while back. I hardly use it, so no great loss if it all goes tits up.

Well, did a system restore backup, plus a boot cd. My connection is crap, so I fully expect this to take days, but I've started.

After about 4 hours, screen says 30% complete. Let's just see what happens.

 

[Mister Rog]

Final Reminder for those wishing to Update to Windows 10 for Free from Win7 and 8.1 using the assistive technologies method, the offer finally ends in 14 Days time(31 Dec 2017)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

After reading all the comments, I may just do it. I have an old laptop, which although a few years old has not been used much, but if/when my desktop dies it will be needed. It's Win 7 and won't update due to an MS update cockup up a while back. I hardly use it, so no great loss if it all goes tits up.

Well, did a system restore backup, plus a boot cd. My connection is crap, so I fully expect this to take days, but I've started.

After about 4 hours, screen says 30% complete. Let's just see what happens.

The whole thing took just over 24 hours, mostly due to a really slow connection, laptop left on overnight. There was one hiccup, something about a missing dll file. A quick search found an easy solution that worked.

So, all done. I now need to use it and decide whether to keep it, although it would seem kinda silly not to after it taking so long and I'll need to start using Win 10 at some stage. First impression is that it looks like Win 8 but maybe better, but time will tell. I'm still waiting for the bit that asks if I've had a leg amputated.

[Mr Skrunts]

Well I built my self a PC from bits I bougt off a mate, treated my self to a new case and found the graphics card didnt fit.  Sorted all that.

Decided to try windows 10, happy with most of it, then my 8 port hub died, for one reason or another have been offline for a few days.

Finally back online, had to run a new lan cable from router to PC as the new hub I bought a few months ago apparently is a managed one and I cant be botherered with it.

So fineally back on OOF and the net speeds are ittermitant, seems my phone line out side my have been yanked off the wall by kids playing about, damage to one of the cars as well. so my speed problems might be extarnal cable problems

So giving W10 a go, so far not tempted back to W7, few things not happy with, but as TB allways said about W7, got to give it a fair chance first.

[zirk]

The whole idea of this thread was last chance to free upgrade win10, using the link I posted, in other words get win10 activated on your device before the deadline finishes.

Weither you choose to use it or not is up to you, as your win10 licence will be ready and waiting for you, or put it another way when you you are forced down that route.

For those still pondering, if you do leave it the last miniute, set your system clock to US, that should give you an extra 12 / 24 hours extra, as Microsoft deadlines generaaly end in US time.