Upgrades
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I am on the verge of reinstalling Win7 on a 6 year old desktop. So, why not just go with the hive and go with the latest and greatest? Because I like 7 better than 10. I am familiar/comfortable and productive with it. I have it on a new laptop, and don't see enough new features that make it worthwhile...I don't need Cortana, Edge, or that big ugly start menu! :laugh:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
kmoorevs wrote:
big ugly start menu!
Funny that you said that since both my youngest daughter and I find the Windows 8.x start screen much more usable than that [Windows 10] "menu". The white on black jump lists also annoyed the crap out of me. Oh, and Edge is atrociously bad.
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I am just wondering something. In the threads below I am reading about people having disasterous times upgrading their machines to Win 10, and then someone replies that they had no problems at all. What is the relative age of the hardware of those with problems compared to those with no problems at all? I am betting the newer the hardware, the less problems being had. My machine is 5 years old and running Win 7. Should I attempt to upgrade? I am thinking not.
Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
It's not the age of the hardware itself, its the length of time the OS its currently on has had time to rot. Windows 10 will be fine on a fresh install, its just less likely on a upgrade install, as it wont be able to undo all the abuse you've been giving it for 5 years.
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Do a full backup first (AOMEI is good, and free) Upgrade. Download ISO version. Reformat HDD and install from ISO. Reinstall software. Reload data from backup (AOMEI allows you to load a backup as a virtual drive, so you can do an image restore to get back to your Win 7 setup, or access just the files you want from the backup set) Don't try to miss any stages... :laugh: You will likely get some grief - the 7 -> 10 upgrade can be awkward - but provided you do a proper install after the upgrade you should be able to minimize them. Is it good? Well...a bit. It's uglier than Win 7, any old hardware may not have drivers and it's badly integrated. But it is the way forward unfortunately, so at some point you will have to move.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
Before you do anything, make sure your current system has been activated. Mine wasn't and I didn't realise it. I bought it installed on a new machine I had built and assumed it was pukka. When I tried to install the ISO, it wouldn't. I was then left with having to buy a legitimate copy just to get Win10 installed.
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Mail is a pile of poo - it doesn't event register itself properly as the mail application (because it's a "Metro" app and they don't play nice with desktop ones). So you can right click an image or file, and select "Send to...Mail recipient" and it does a total of nothing. "Forward to" seems to disappear on a regular basis as well... Install Windows Live Mail (from the Windows Essentials download pack) and you get a much better email client that works like Outlook Express used to, only better. Only gripe is that it doesn't show a tray icon for "new mail". Edge is IE for win 10 - run once, install something better, and then ignore it for ever more! :laugh:
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I am just wondering something. In the threads below I am reading about people having disasterous times upgrading their machines to Win 10, and then someone replies that they had no problems at all. What is the relative age of the hardware of those with problems compared to those with no problems at all? I am betting the newer the hardware, the less problems being had. My machine is 5 years old and running Win 7. Should I attempt to upgrade? I am thinking not.
Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
I'm running a 7 year-old ACER laptop that started life with Windows Vista. I upgraded to Windows 7, and then to Windows 10. The only problem upgrading to 10 was a driver in my anti-virus package that needed an update, and my employer's VPN app no longer works. Both of these issues are the responsibility of the application creator and not Windows 10. I have a fairly spartan machine: Office, several versions of Visual Studio, Chrome, Thunderbird, and VirtualBox are my principal big-ticket applications. I don't run games or any apps with complex driver requirements. I've noticed through 30 years of Windows upgrades that the people who have the most problems are the ones who, for whatever reason, have a lot of complicated applications installed. Photoshop, DBMS's, non-Microsoft IDE's, and custom hardware to name a few. I don't think it's realistic to expect a pain-free upgrade in that case. It's probably more prudent to do a clean install and then re-install each application, one by one, and check your stability after each install. While it's painful, it's probably more productive to do it that way than searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack after an in-place upgrade.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I don't know either, but I wouldn't take any chances until I read it on Microsofts site.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
It's true. I had an HP Win 7 computer sitting around that was all jacked up with viruses. I saw in one of the articles that you could download the iso. Went to the site and found Microsoft has a utility that will set up a thumb drive for you to do the installation. About 90 minutes later I had a full, clean install of Win 10 running on that machine using the HP Win 7 license. I should note that I had to change the boot order for some reason before it would allow me to choose the hard drive for installation.
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I am just wondering something. In the threads below I am reading about people having disasterous times upgrading their machines to Win 10, and then someone replies that they had no problems at all. What is the relative age of the hardware of those with problems compared to those with no problems at all? I am betting the newer the hardware, the less problems being had. My machine is 5 years old and running Win 7. Should I attempt to upgrade? I am thinking not.
Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
With a 5 year old computer. You are probable looking to upgrade in 2-3 years MAX. If there was EVER a reason to wait. You Found it!
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I am just wondering something. In the threads below I am reading about people having disasterous times upgrading their machines to Win 10, and then someone replies that they had no problems at all. What is the relative age of the hardware of those with problems compared to those with no problems at all? I am betting the newer the hardware, the less problems being had. My machine is 5 years old and running Win 7. Should I attempt to upgrade? I am thinking not.
Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
The only upgrade to Win 10 that I have done is on a VMWare Fusion VM running on a Mac mini (Late 2012). No problems whatsoever that I'm aware of, but then I've probably only spent an hour total using it since I upgraded in August, since I rarely have a use for Windows Desktop. I have both Windows Server 2008R2 and 2012 VM's that I run much more often since I need to be able to develop/test against Active Directory.
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I am just wondering something. In the threads below I am reading about people having disasterous times upgrading their machines to Win 10, and then someone replies that they had no problems at all. What is the relative age of the hardware of those with problems compared to those with no problems at all? I am betting the newer the hardware, the less problems being had. My machine is 5 years old and running Win 7. Should I attempt to upgrade? I am thinking not.
Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
I successfully upgraded a 5 year old Dell XPS from Win7 to 10. Granted it's my gaming rig so the hardware was top of the line when I got it. It also doesn't have all the tools and apps my Dev machine does so I avoided those common pitfalls. I also upgraded two other Win 8.1 devices (one for the wife one for the kids) that were less than a year old and had no problems either. My parents upgraded a 2 year old desktop from 7 to 10 and the only issue they had was an ancient printer (ancient being about 4 years old) that didn't have drivers. HP was nice enough to point us to a driver for a newer printer that was Win10 compatible and worked with their printer. The biggest issue I've seen has been older hardware not being compatible and causing issues (and it's usually laptop hardware).
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I am just wondering something. In the threads below I am reading about people having disasterous times upgrading their machines to Win 10, and then someone replies that they had no problems at all. What is the relative age of the hardware of those with problems compared to those with no problems at all? I am betting the newer the hardware, the less problems being had. My machine is 5 years old and running Win 7. Should I attempt to upgrade? I am thinking not.
Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
My Early 2013 HP Envy X2 laptop fell into the "fun" category. After getting the all clear from the MS app I decided on a clean install (wanted to confirm that the performance issues I was running into were slow hardware not OS rot). In retrospect I think this was probably a mistake. After the install I didn't have a working keyboard, touchpad, or wifi. I had a spare keyboard, mouse, and ethernet dongle; unfortunately I only had 2 USB ports and no spare hub. That made phase one of find and install the elephanting drivers oh so much fun. HP (sunshines) didn't have any W10 drivers out for it; fortunately all but one of the W8 drivers installed. Unfortunately the one that didn't was for wifi; its installer just crashed. Broadcom (also sunshines) didn't appear to offer any Windows drivers on their page. They did have Linux drivers but it looked like they were kernel version specific blobs and were last built in January making them sunshines thrice over. My route for a working wifi driver lead from Google to ScummyPretendDriverDownloadsThatActuallyAreCrapwareInstallers.com X| X| X| which in between all the malicious download links did list a few driver builds that supposedly would install on W10. I was able to throw those version numbers back into Google; and on the second try got a driver that installed and worked on my laptop via the support page for an Asus laptop. (I think, might've been Lenovo's driver that worked for me instead.) I haven't updated my desktop yet (waiting for over xmas/newyears break just in case something goes wrong) but it's a year old DIY build; and the vendors of enthusiast parts are generally very good about making drivers available for newer (and older) OSes. Also on my do over the holidays list is an older desktop running W7; and if possible, a 9yo Core (1) Duo laptop that shipped with Vista. The latter currently has a botched W7 install my brother tried to do while he was (ab)using it. If I can't get anything newer on the laptop; I won't be that upset. However I would like to restore it to functioning emergency loaner status. (My brother ended up with it after he managed to drop his thinkpad enough times that he broke the spillproof tray under the keyboard and poured coffee down the crack.)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming
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I am just wondering something. In the threads below I am reading about people having disasterous times upgrading their machines to Win 10, and then someone replies that they had no problems at all. What is the relative age of the hardware of those with problems compared to those with no problems at all? I am betting the newer the hardware, the less problems being had. My machine is 5 years old and running Win 7. Should I attempt to upgrade? I am thinking not.
Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
If the system is old now and running fine, I'd avoid upgrading (assuming you're running Win 7). You've got 5 more years of support and by then, your machine will be ancient and you'll be wanting to get a new machine anyways. This of course assumes there's nothing in Windows 10 that you truly need (DX12??). As a test, I initially upgraded an old (came with Vista) HP laptop to Win 10 and everything appeared to be working fine. Later I came across Windows update issue that I was able to fix with some research and a registry edit. However, the more I found out about the privacy/tracking issues and the forced updates issues in Windows 10 made me decide to put Mint Linux on the laptop. All the applications I use are available on Windows and Linux so it was an easy decision. I've been running it for over a month now and have had no issues what so ever.
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It's true. I had an HP Win 7 computer sitting around that was all jacked up with viruses. I saw in one of the articles that you could download the iso. Went to the site and found Microsoft has a utility that will set up a thumb drive for you to do the installation. About 90 minutes later I had a full, clean install of Win 10 running on that machine using the HP Win 7 license. I should note that I had to change the boot order for some reason before it would allow me to choose the hard drive for installation.
:thumbsup: I assume you need to use the computer you want to upgrade when you set up that thumbdrive.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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:thumbsup: I assume you need to use the computer you want to upgrade when you set up that thumbdrive.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Nope. I used my regular computer to do it. It also gives me the option to install 32 or 64 bit when it boots from the drive. Here's the link. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10[^] Now, in fairness, this might have been a bit more complicated if the installation media didn't have the drivers for the network adapter on that computer.
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Nope. I used my regular computer to do it. It also gives me the option to install 32 or 64 bit when it boots from the drive. Here's the link. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10[^] Now, in fairness, this might have been a bit more complicated if the installation media didn't have the drivers for the network adapter on that computer.
Good info, thanks.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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OriginalGriff wrote:
old hardware may not have drivers
BOOM! The single biggest reason NOT to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. If you don't want to entertain the possibility of having to buy any new hardware, do NOT upgrade to Win10. Remember the sh|tstorm that happened with Vista? All of a sudden, none of your otherwise perfectly serviceable hardware was compatible.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
Remember the sh|tstorm that happened with Vista? All of a sudden, none of your otherwise perfectly serviceable hardware was compatible.
Vista introduced a new driver model, which is still in use today. I've never run Vista myself, but all the hardware I've used with 7 and above still run fine with 10. Even if manufacturers have no drivers specifically for Windows 10, the ones for 7 and above still work. YMMV with laptops though. The OEMs seem to take the extra step to break everything at every Windows version to make sure you just replace your hardware.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
Remember the sh|tstorm that happened with Vista? All of a sudden, none of your otherwise perfectly serviceable hardware was compatible.
Vista introduced a new driver model, which is still in use today. I've never run Vista myself, but all the hardware I've used with 7 and above still run fine with 10. Even if manufacturers have no drivers specifically for Windows 10, the ones for 7 and above still work. YMMV with laptops though. The OEMs seem to take the extra step to break everything at every Windows version to make sure you just replace your hardware.
Why doesn't the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" attitude apply to Windows or are we talking built in obsolescence? Today I tried a clean install of WinX. Afterwards my PC couldn't mount my Win7 drive. Unplug Win10 and everything works again. Honestly. I give up.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
