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Windows 10 Upgrade Works, Still Free — Parallax Forums

Windows 10 Upgrade Works, Still Free

I just resurrected a password-locked Windows 7 laptop from a pawn shop (a good price and a good challenge). Google is awesome, you can learn how to do anything. The bottom video worked great to bypass the Windows password. I also upgraded (easy, Heater!) to Windows 10 today, more than two years after the "deadline" has passed. Remember the GWX (get Windows 10) app that nagged you mercilessly to upgrade before the July 29, 2016 deadline? Well per https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/, you just shove a v1809 flashdrive (made using media creator) in the computer's USB slot and click install. Worked perfectly. So if you have an old computer that "missed the deadline", you can still upgrade if you like. I'm pretty happy with Win10.

Comments

  • Just be careful which win10 version you put on. You could find many things failing that require older device drivers. The last win10 that was pushed out will not allow ANY unsigned device drivers to be loaded if you use secure boot. ANY unsigned driver. And you can not specify which unsigned driver to load or not, it is all or nothing. Windows, one step forward, two locks back...
  • I can only say 1 thing.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Yep. Recently I upgraded a Win 7 box I inherited from the office.

    It was a long winded process that took all day.

    1) Make a media installation disk for Win 7. Install and activate that using the numbers from the blue Windows sticker on side of the box. The original install was wiped before they would let the machine out of the office.

    2) Nothing worked so figure out where to find drivers for WiFi and such so the we can get on the net and continue. Install drivers from USB stick.

    3) Make a media installation disk for Win 10. Took a while to find out where to get it from on the MS site. They don't exactly advertise them. Nearly ended up installing from images from somewhere else, luckily I realized that would be a bad idea, there is no way to check the integrity of Windows images and that site installs it's own malware/spyware into them.

    4) Upgrade to Win 10 from that.

    5) Nothing worked. Eventually figure out that if I remove the drivers from step 2) Win 10 will use it's own drivers and things worked again.

    6) Install the Linux Subsystem for Windows so as to make the thing actually useful.

    7) Make a recovery disk.

    Somewhere in all that is countless hours waiting for Win 10 updates to install and a bazillion reboots...

    I guess a Windows guru would have found all that easy but as a noob it was a struggle involving a lot of googling and false starts. The whole process is an order of magnitude longer and more complex than installing any common Linux distribution.

    Everything has been working really well since, except....

    The other day everything was failing left right and center. Eventually I checked the properties of my drive C: and it reported the disk was 100% full. Hmm... that can't be right. Noting in Explorer was showing up big files or directories. I could not find any such thing using the tools in the LSW. This time Google was no help. Clearly Windows is taking a lot of file space somewhere and hiding the fact from me.

    Ah, well, after a reboot everything was fine again. 60% free space.

    Don't you hate it when that happens?
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    We have a doc at work on how to install a fresh W10 on a work pc. It's about 10 pages long. And almost every patch Tuesday the install instructions need changing because MS keeps moving things.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Clusso,
    Almost every patch Tuesday the install instructions need changing because MS keeps moving things.
    Hmm...I thought I was just dumb. Being still a Windows noob I of course often go to Google to find out how to do something. Sure enough there are thousands of blogs and such on pretty much everything. But an awful lot of the time the menus, dialogs, options, they have carefully presented as screen shots don't exist or perhaps have moved elsewhere. Even if we are just talking Win 10.

    How do normal humans cope with all this?
  • I'd take Windows 7 over 10 any day. 10 doesn't really do anything interesting that 7 doesn't, but 10 has so many problems. Among others:
    - Forced updates that change major stuff without asking
    - Almost no QA, updates almost break more things than they fix
    - 10's Default applications like the calculator and the image preview are somehow worse than 7's
    - Inexplicable deprecation and removal of useful features like the MIDI Mapper.
    - Compatibility with old software (i.e. one of the major reasons windows is as popular as it is) is less good. Especially old DirectX stuff tends to not work right.
    - Default settings show you ads and send way too much usage data to M$
    - M$ attempts to push people to the horrifying Windows Store using schemes such as some of their own-brand devices running Win 10 S, which can't use regular software, by default. (Even trying to open Powershell from the context menu errors out, lol)
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Wuerfel_21,

    That is an interesting take on things. As someone who has avoided MS since 1997 and only started using Windows, under pressure from work, a couple of years ago and therefore knows little about it I have a different take on it:
    ...10 doesn't really do anything interesting that 7 doesn't,...
    Oh but it does. Win 10 has the Linux subsystem for Windows. Without that it would be useless to me.

    - Forced updates : Oddly that has not been an issue for me. Perhaps becaue I don't use any of that "major" stuff. I'm not used to Windows so if things have changed it's all alien to me and I perhaps don't notice. Updates have been incovenient at times though.

    - Almost no QA : So I have been reading recently. Luckily no impact here yet.

    - 10's Default applications ... are somehow worse than 7's : Are they, I never use them so that's OK.

    - Inexplicable deprecation and removal of useful features like the MIDI Mapper. : Hasn't bothered me. Probably because I avoid Win specific features.

    - Compatibility with old software : I can see that would be an issue. Of course I have no old Win software so I don't notice. The only Win specific program I use is LtSpice from Analog Deviices, works fine.

    - Default settings show you ads : Do they? I have never seen any. Is the because I have Win 10 Pro ?

    - send way too much usage data to M$ : That does bug me. I'm hoping AntiBeacon is stopping a lot of that.

    - M$ attempts to push people to the horrifying Windows Store : Ah yes. I don't go there.

    I guess I'm an odd case. A noob to Windows so I don't worry about incompatibilities and such. All my favorite Open Source software from my familiar Linux world runs just fine. Some times I forget this is not a Linux box.
  • The Linux Subsystem is neat, but not necessary at all. I can use stuff like gcc, bash, make, dd and whatever else just fine.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Oops, I gambled that it might be possible to avoid Windows-bashing... and lost. :)

    For the Windows-tolerant among us, I just discovered the Belarc Advisor utility, which is free and analyzes your entire computer system and outputs a detailed report. Very useful IMO.

    https://www.belarc.com/products_belarc_advisor

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    @erco

    I'm not bashing on Windows. I use BASH on Win 10 everyday. I love Win 10.

    I told you, they put some mind altering drugs in the free food and beer they gave me at the MS office in Mountain View.

    @Wuerfel_21

    How do you do that?

    In the past, when I had to use Windows for whatever reason, I installed Cygwin so that I could get work done. Which is pretty cool.

    On occasion I have used MinGW to build stuff on Windows. Which is also pretty cool.

    But the LSW gives me my familiar Debian and no quirks. Which is amazingly cooler.

    Well, except for the quirks of course. Like one cannot get a core dump for debugging under LSW.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    At work, all pcs run W10 Pro & Office 365 & Norton Security for Business.

    A while ago, W10 started popping up little windows in the bottom corner. Now other software is using this popup method for advertising too. Norton is pushing stuff here too!

    We broadcast live videos every week. Before we broadcast, we force Windows and Office updates in the hope there will not be an update while we are broadcasting. Remember those "Update to Windows 10 now" popup banners that got broadcast on TV shows a few years ago???
  • Heater. wrote: »
    @erco

    I'm not bashing on Windows. I use BASH on Win 10 everyday. I love Win 10.

    I told you, they put some mind altering drugs in the free food and beer they gave me at the MS office in Mountain View....

    Yes, I did notice that at that time. I even started some 'save Heater.' thread, but it did not stuck.

    Sometime I would like to have the old @"Heater." back who DID bash windows. But something real weird happened down there when you where state-side.

    I am still unsure if you are @Heater. or @Heater without dot.

    worried,

    Mike
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    If you find a user here with the name "Heater". Uppercase "H" and no "." then that is not me. At least not yet.
    The old me was "heater". Lower case "h" and no ".".

    I should check into a local Linux Users Group for some reorientation therapy. If they will still let me in...

  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    I looked through Wuerfel_21's list and I'll have to agree on every point. I'm not a Windows user myself, but my wife is, and I have to help out with the problems sometimes. The Win10 variant is nightmarish. Even Win8 was better. Her old desktop Win7 machine was easier for her and easier for me. For my wife there isn't anything at all in Windows 10 that improves things for her. But a lot of the opposite. And yes, those ads.. and continous downloads.. full 128GB SSD all the time, due to the latter. And so on and so forth. The thing is rubbish.
    The Linux subsystem sounds nice, but I have absolutely no use for it - I have lots of Linux boxes in every size.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    My main issue with Win10 is that the regular updates are huge and unavoidable and invasive. Lord help you if you're at a coffee shop doing a quick email check and the dreaded blue DON'T TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER screen pops up. And you need to leave. And your battery is low. You can kiss that afternoon goodbye.
  • erco wrote: »
    My main issue with Win10 is that the regular updates are huge and unavoidable and invasive.

    Currently, my only issue with Windows 10, I actually really like how my Win10 laptops are working out. However, the continuous, CPU stopping, hard drive killing updates are so bad, it makes me want to dump Win10.

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