A friend of mine posed a question to me yesterday I didn't have an easy answer for. What's it going to take to upgrade to Win10? I started looking at installation media for Win10 and found it to be really confusing. Pricing all the way from a few dollars to 200 dollars and there doesn't seem to be anyway of verifying what you will get. I read a review where a purchaser on Amazon bought a installation disk and was told the product key is only valid in the UK. How is it possible to buy Win10 on eBay for less than $5 and be legit? Dozens of sellers.
Where, How, What to buy for Win 10 OS?
- Thread starter Magic Static
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i got my key from scdkey, no issues with it
you can download the media from microsoft, even install it without activation, you just can do a few things
i recommend a fresh install, not an upgrade
you can download the media from microsoft, even install it without activation, you just can do a few things
i recommend a fresh install, not an upgrade
Win10 was a free upgrade when it first came out...for those who had windows 8
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
Sent from my SM-G950U using the SatelliteGuys app!
and for win 7 also
rumor is you can still do it
but the upgrade is known for many issues, and most people recomend a fresh install
just use the win7/win8 key
Windows 10 was a free upgrade for pretty much anyone Windows 7 and up at that point in time ('til the end of 2018?).
Unless you do a lot of homework the best way to upgrade is to buy a new computer with the OEM OS installed. In-situ upgrading can be a tricky path and you end up with some baggage (some good, most not good).
The most important bit of advice that I can offer about Windows 10 is that you need to keep around a system drive image made when the installation is new. Windows 10 seems to get its factory restore partition corrupted quite easily because it is constantly updating it with all of the installed patches (and there are scores of them). Two out of two computers that I've had to factory restore have had corrupt restore partitions such that they would not make it through the restore process.
I recommend not upgrading an machine that had another version of Windows at all (although you pretty much have to if you fell into the Window 8 abyss).
There should be no confusion, this is all very simple.
If you have a PC that came with Windows 7 or 8, you can install Windows 10 for free.
Download the media creation tool directly from Microsoft and create the appropriate ISO image to burn to DVD or bootable USB flash drive.
Download Windows 10
Boot off the DVD/USB, when prompted for the serial key, enter the serial key on the COA sticker on your PC. If you don't have a COA sticker, the activation is integrated and you can hit the skip button. Windows should then automatically activate at the end of the installation as long as you are connected to the internet.
You are entitled to the same sku as your previous Windows install. Windows 7 Home Basic, Home and Windows 8 Home get upgraded to Windows 10 Home. Windows 7 Pro, Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8 Pro get upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. You do not have to do an in place upgrade, you don't even have to install it on the same hard drive.
I did over a dozen Windows 7 -> Windows 10 upgrades this way, this week at work and over 50 in total thus far. Since Windows 10 is more resource heavy then 7, I pull the HDDs and replace them with SSDs and upgrade them to at least 8 GB of RAM. All machines run beautifully and machines have clean installs. Nothing tricky about it. I can do roughly 1 PC an hour going from Windows 7 on a HDD to Windows 10 on an SSD with all company customizations made and software installed ready to be handed back to the end user. What makes it quicker now is 1903 comes with a lot less bloatware to be uninstalled.
Also did this with my 3 computers at home. I have a 12 year old HP that came with Vista with an Intel Core 2 Quad and maxed out a 8GB of RAM and a Intel SSD, got an older NVidia Quadro Pro card from a junk PC at work and the thing runs amazing for it's age with WIN10. My laptop, the computer I'm using now, is from 2011 came with Windows 7 and 16 GB of DDR3. Swapped the HDD for an SSD and put WIN10 on it the day it was released. No issues. My newest PC is from 2013, fourth generation i7 Extreme hexacore, 32 GB of RAM, GeForce 770. Configured it with an SSD from the the factory, replaced it with a larger SSD when WIN 10 came out. Again no problems whatsoever.
With the release of 1903 last week, I did fresh installs on my 3 home PCs and work laptop last Saturday. I refuse to upgrade to the latest release, so I do complete reformats every Spring and Fall. All in all I've probably done 100 - 150 Windows 10 installations and not a single hiccup.
If you have a PC that came with Windows 7 or 8, you can install Windows 10 for free.
Download the media creation tool directly from Microsoft and create the appropriate ISO image to burn to DVD or bootable USB flash drive.
Download Windows 10
Boot off the DVD/USB, when prompted for the serial key, enter the serial key on the COA sticker on your PC. If you don't have a COA sticker, the activation is integrated and you can hit the skip button. Windows should then automatically activate at the end of the installation as long as you are connected to the internet.
You are entitled to the same sku as your previous Windows install. Windows 7 Home Basic, Home and Windows 8 Home get upgraded to Windows 10 Home. Windows 7 Pro, Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8 Pro get upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. You do not have to do an in place upgrade, you don't even have to install it on the same hard drive.
I did over a dozen Windows 7 -> Windows 10 upgrades this way, this week at work and over 50 in total thus far. Since Windows 10 is more resource heavy then 7, I pull the HDDs and replace them with SSDs and upgrade them to at least 8 GB of RAM. All machines run beautifully and machines have clean installs. Nothing tricky about it. I can do roughly 1 PC an hour going from Windows 7 on a HDD to Windows 10 on an SSD with all company customizations made and software installed ready to be handed back to the end user. What makes it quicker now is 1903 comes with a lot less bloatware to be uninstalled.
Also did this with my 3 computers at home. I have a 12 year old HP that came with Vista with an Intel Core 2 Quad and maxed out a 8GB of RAM and a Intel SSD, got an older NVidia Quadro Pro card from a junk PC at work and the thing runs amazing for it's age with WIN10. My laptop, the computer I'm using now, is from 2011 came with Windows 7 and 16 GB of DDR3. Swapped the HDD for an SSD and put WIN10 on it the day it was released. No issues. My newest PC is from 2013, fourth generation i7 Extreme hexacore, 32 GB of RAM, GeForce 770. Configured it with an SSD from the the factory, replaced it with a larger SSD when WIN 10 came out. Again no problems whatsoever.
With the release of 1903 last week, I did fresh installs on my 3 home PCs and work laptop last Saturday. I refuse to upgrade to the latest release, so I do complete reformats every Spring and Fall. All in all I've probably done 100 - 150 Windows 10 installations and not a single hiccup.
EarDemon is correct. I just did this two weeks ago, same link he posted above, on my Dell Latitude i7 that came with Win 7 Pro. I created the USB flash drive version, and used the Win7 key that's located on a label under the laptops battery for a Dell.
Same here, have done dozens of Windows 10 installs and upgrades. Everything runs fine. The big thing is don't try and install it on something that common sense will tell you it is just too old. Make sure it is a newer computer with at least 8 GiGs of RAM. I have seen people think that hey, I will upgrade to 10 to make my PC better or to keep up with the Jones. When it is a 15 Year old computer running XP. I warned them against it. Then they get mad a Microsoft. Microsoft has their share of issues, but done right it can be pretty smooth.
Yep, 8 GB should be the bare minimum for WIN 10. I did some installs on machines that had 4 GB, just to get them out of the way as I had a bunch of RAM on order through our hardware vendor, it just didn't come in yet. The install went fine, the installation of software went fine, but as soon as you try to do something the PC turns into a rock. My users need to open very large PDFs, DXFs, PLTs, DWGs and SLDDRWs, 4 GB of RAM with WIN 10 simply does not cut it for that. Plus most everyone at work uses Chrome. I sit here typing this in Chrome with three other tabs over and it's using 600 MB of RAM alone. At work I make 8 GB the minimum, but I try to get 12 GB to 16 GB in there, depending on what I have laying around. For our CAD/CAM guys that design in AutoCAD, Solidworks and Creo they all have 32 GB with 8 GB Quadro Pros. Next week I'm planning to upgrade two of our ten year old Dell Precision's that have quad core Xeon's from 7 to 10 for a couple college interns that will be working for us during the summer doing CAD work.
I call that swap hell.
I installed Vista on a computer at work, just to see why everybody hated it. It was nice at first, but then after a few upgrades, it just went AWOL at the slightest provocation. I think it had 2GB in there. Not enough!Installation is easy (though time consuming since you still have to reconfigure the defaults of so many features). I made notes the first time I installed Windows 10 Pro and there were over 50 "features" that I wanted to change the default settings on (typically removing or disabling the feature). My most recent install from a restore image still included Microsoft's abandoned Groove client and a whole lot of bloatware (this may or may not be minimized on reinstalls through the use of a Microsoft Account). The path to avoid the use of a Microsoft Account or a domain with a Pro computer remains fairly obscure and like Apple software, it changes with each major update (approximately semi-annually).
I get the feeling that most of these upgrades have been on name-brand computers as opposed to scratch-built computers. Is that the case?
Windows 10 is easy to install but it can be trouble to maintain (even if you start afresh periodically -- something a large majority of users aren't looking to do). Moreso for computers assembled from parts that don't get factory or Microsoft testing (which is surprisingly thin to begin with).
Installing Windows 10 on machines that don't support stuff like DirectX 12 and other modern features (even UEFI if you're so inclined) is to not avail yourself of some of the important features to be had with the new Windows version.
Yes. At work we are a Dell shop with a few HPs in the mix, at home I use all HPs. For internal hardware it’s all big name, all CPUs are Intel, not a single AMD. The vast majority of GPUs are Nvidia’s, I do my best not to get ATI/AMD cards, but sometimes I can’t help it. All HDD are WD, all SSDs are Intel or Samsung.
In Windows 8, 8.1 and maybe the first release of 10, it was difficult to not get forced into using a Microsoft account to sign in to Windows. The trick I would use was to disconnect the ethernet cable during installation and setup, if an internet connection was not detected you got the option to create a local account. In all recent releases of 10 it is very easy to say no to a Microsoft account. Although they strongly encourage it, you can say no. At home what I do I click the option at the bottom of one of the screens during the initial setup that says ‘Join domain instead’. You then create the local user account but you never have to join it to a domain.
The tweaks to the UI and other customizations are annoying to do, but I can knock them all out in about 5 - 10 minutes. 1903 is the seventh release of 10, so that means I did at least 28 Windows 10 installs between my four computers so far. At this point it's all muscle memory for me. I use Classic Shell as a start menu replacement and have my preferred configuration saved in an XML file that I import upon installation. It’s the downloading, installation of the individual software that is time consuming, not Windows itself. For my files, I have a batch file that I execute that copies the entire contents of my Docs, Pics and Music folders to my NAS that I run prior to eradicating the previous installation of Windows, and then a batch file that does the opposite, copies from the NAS to my local drive once the computer is functional again.
In Windows 8, 8.1 and maybe the first release of 10, it was difficult to not get forced into using a Microsoft account to sign in to Windows. The trick I would use was to disconnect the ethernet cable during installation and setup, if an internet connection was not detected you got the option to create a local account. In all recent releases of 10 it is very easy to say no to a Microsoft account. Although they strongly encourage it, you can say no. At home what I do I click the option at the bottom of one of the screens during the initial setup that says ‘Join domain instead’. You then create the local user account but you never have to join it to a domain.
The tweaks to the UI and other customizations are annoying to do, but I can knock them all out in about 5 - 10 minutes. 1903 is the seventh release of 10, so that means I did at least 28 Windows 10 installs between my four computers so far. At this point it's all muscle memory for me. I use Classic Shell as a start menu replacement and have my preferred configuration saved in an XML file that I import upon installation. It’s the downloading, installation of the individual software that is time consuming, not Windows itself. For my files, I have a batch file that I execute that copies the entire contents of my Docs, Pics and Music folders to my NAS that I run prior to eradicating the previous installation of Windows, and then a batch file that does the opposite, copies from the NAS to my local drive once the computer is functional again.
Well this is fun.(not) Just for grins and giggles I downloaded the Windows 10 install from Microsoft and burned a disk. Test subject: 5 year old Toshiba Satellite Intel i7 4700 MQ, 8g ram, Samsung SSD. My neighbor tossed this out including the original box and packing material. The battery had died in such a way it prevented the laptop from running on AC power. Just looked dead, so out it went. I ordered a new battery and loaded Win 7 on it. So now I tried an "upgrade" to Win 10. "Don't do it they all told me 
" 
got way into the upgrade process and Win 10 decided my hard drive SSD was not compatible. First it complained about UFEI so I enabled it. Then it complained about the format system being MBR instead of GPT. Changed that and I was able to install windows 10 then but.... now the SSD won't boot. Yikes! Pulled the SSD and put a 500g WD HDD in and all is happy. BTW I used the Win 7 product key for this Win 10 install and it was happy with that. I guess I'm happy with that too
" got way into the upgrade process and Win 10 decided my hard drive SSD was not compatible. First it complained about UFEI so I enabled it. Then it complained about the format system being MBR instead of GPT. Changed that and I was able to install windows 10 then but.... now the SSD won't boot. Yikes! Pulled the SSD and put a 500g WD HDD in and all is happy. BTW I used the Win 7 product key for this Win 10 install and it was happy with that. I guess I'm happy with that too
Magic, can you run something like Casper, and then use it to clone the image from the WD HDD on to the SSD drive? Maybe that would work.
I don't have an SSD drive, but I've used Casper over the years, and it's my favorite imaging software. Of course, there's other imaging software, and I believe free ones.
I don't have an SSD drive, but I've used Casper over the years, and it's my favorite imaging software. Of course, there's other imaging software, and I believe free ones.
So the take-away is that if you've done the process dozens of times and made notes, its easy to install Windows 10 on name-brand CSM prefab business-class computers.
What of the computers that people have assembled/frankenbuilt themselves using a variety of manufacturer's components?
What of the computers that people have assembled/frankenbuilt themselves using a variety of manufacturer's components?
My guess is that the drive doesn't support TRIM garbage collection or something fundamental along those lines and a business decision was made by Microsoft not to support it.
Ahhh the pitfalls of being too smart for your own good.
I'm looking at that situation with my desktop. Been studying the drivers and other needs. I hate losing software and hardware because of an OS upgrade but it happens every time.More than likely something along those lines. I found the build sheet on this computer and it didn't come with the Samsung SSD.
I have a older A10 laptop that windows installs win 10 on fine even after running linux on it. I put a SSD in it and as long as windows see's the hardware it activates No problems at all.
