Windows 7 to windows 10

Jivesinger

esuhl wrote: »

But... Retail licences aren't tied to particular hardware. Microsoft have no right to restrict me from installing WIndows 10 on a different machine. :-/

I don't claim to understand the licensing. I'm not sure if the free upgrade is a retail licence or an oem licence or indeed a 3rd 'none of the above' type of licence.

But I am pretty sure that the Windows 10 installer won't accept a Win 7 or 8 Product Key, and that reinstalls are activated automatically based on hardware that activated before.

Whether you can work around this I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that the automatic mechanisms won't activate if you change the hardware significantly (which I think means a change of motherboard).

Bear in mind that Microsoft have said the upgrade to Windows 10 is free "for the supported lifetime of the device", and I assume this means OEM support, so perhaps the assumed mechanism is that you call the OEM to give you a new licence if you need them to replace the motherboard.

Jim431

I upgraded from Win7 to Win10 using a DVD iso.

The GetWin10 online didn't work cos it said my PC had a non compliant display adapter.
Maybe NVIDIA will release a new driver later on.
Anyway I thought I would have a play.

You boot into Windows 7 then run the DVD ISO to start the Win10 upgrade - No MS Product Keys needed.
If you have Windows that came with the computer (OEM) then booting into the DVD won't work cos the Product keys wont be accepted.

Windows 10 appeared to work OK but the boot and shutdown was very slow.
Slower than the Win10 preview versions that I had been running in VirtualBox on the same machine !
Google Earth wouldn't load due to display problems.
There were many errors and warnings in the Event logs.
Defender wouldn't run with Comodo Firewall.
The boot log showed many (strange) problems. Similar to problems with Win8 to Win8.1 upgrade and still unresolved.

I wanted to do a clean install to try and fix the slowness but it warned me that I would lose the option to revert back to Windows 7.
This option is there for one month only.

I need a fast PC and Google Earth so I reverted back to Windows 7.

But... Comodo Firewall was crippled and the diagnostics couldn't fix it.
So I tried to uninstall but it wouldn't - I tried to clear out the registry and files.
But it still wouldn't reinstall.
So I ended up doing a complete system/files restore from one of the backups I had previously made.

So IF you are thinking of going down this route please,please do a complete system (HDD) backup just in case.
AOMEI backup is free and very good.

Jim431

Well it looks like the new version of Comodo (for Win10) caused most/all of the Comodo problems I experienced according to feedback on their forum.
Nvidia have apparently said that they will not be updating drivers for legacy video adapters - so that scuppers Win10 for an awful lot of people (unless they can make do with basic graphics) - tho I cant find this in any statement.

Fightsback

Jim431 wrote: »

Well it looks like the new version of Comodo (for Win10) caused most/all of the Comodo problems I experienced according to feedback on their forum.
Nvidia have apparently said that they will not be updating drivers for legacy video adapters - so that scuppers Win10 for an awful lot of people (unless they can make do with basic graphics) - tho I cant find this in any statement.

How legacy do you mean ?

Geforce 8000 series is supported and that's a 2006 card.

http://www.geforce.co.uk/drivers/results/88373

Nvidia has a 10 year support policy and that's far better than AMD's

Big_Graeme

10 year old video cards and software? Time to upgrade, support can not go on forever.

Jim431

NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 - PC from late 2009 - MS Win10 update says not compatible.

The only Win10 MS driver that was available was the basic one.
Tried online update but found no other.

The Nvidia website shows the latest driver for this as
Version 309.08 - WHQL Release Date Tue Feb 24, 2015
This Win7 PC is fast and does everthing I need so I won't be buying new anytime soon. But if there are updates out there then I would be very interested to know.

Fightsback

Jim431 wrote: »

NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 - PC from late 2009 - MS Win10 update says not compatible.

The only Win10 MS driver that was available was the basic one.
Tried online update but found no other.

The Nvidia website shows the latest driver for this as
Version 309.08 - WHQL Release Date Tue Feb 24, 2015
This Win7 PC is fast and does everthing I need so I won't be buying new anytime soon. But if there are updates out there then I would be very interested to know.

The PC might be from then but the 6000 series came out in 2004 hence support dropped end of 2014. The only thing giving that current support is the Linux opensource Nouveau driver, it's no longer supported by the Nvidia Linux propriety driver.

Double_V

esuhl wrote: »

There's a fair bit of confusion over the upgrade process. As I understand it, you have to upgrade your current Win7/8 OS so that Microsoft can verify your licence and convert it to a Windows 10 licence.

After you've upgraded and converted your Win7/8 licence into a Win10 one, you can perform a clean upgrade using a DVD image (free download) and your old Win7/8 product key.

Or so I heard! :-D

So after we have upgraded to Windows 10.
We select .iso radio button from the download page and burn the iso on DVD. And that will be our installation disk for Windows 10 ?
And we will not be needing a product key ?

wongataa

Double_V wrote: »

So after we have upgraded to Windows 10.
We select .iso radio button from the download page and burn the iso on DVD. And that will be our installation disk for Windows 10 ?

Correct

Double_V wrote: »

And we will not be needing a product key ?

Correct. If you have to reinstall in the future the activation process ill check your computer matches the one that Windows 10 was first activated on. If it is then it will activate.

If it is a different computer you will need to pay.

Fightsback

wongataa wrote: »

Correct

Correct. If you have to reinstall in the future the activation process ill check your computer matches the one that Windows 10 was first activated on. If it is then it will activate.

If it is a different computer you will need to pay.

You won't need to pay if it's a retail version of windows that you upgraded, it can be moved from machine to machine.