Hey folks,

I know many people are avoiding Windows 10. However, for those who have just been putting the 'upgrade' off until the end of the free upgrade period... It ends in just over 2 days from the time I'm writing this.

Don't take this as a recommendation to upgrade, as I have no strong feelings about it one way or the other. I just did it on the wife's machine, and other than the long time it took to complete, it was painless (AFAIK, so far). I'm starting it on my desktop and letting it run while I sleep. There is a lot more software installed on my machine, but I'll hope for the best.

For anybody planning on doing the upgrade, you may wish to grab a copy of Belarc Advisor and run it. Save the results to a USB drive or somewhere off of the machine being upgraded... just as a precaution to preserve software keys. It turned out not to be needed for the wife's machine (AFAIK, so far), but YMMV.

If you don't want to be forced to upgrade, there's Never10.

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

You can also get the update, activate it and you then have a few days (10?) to roll right back to your previous OS.
Then go download the win 10 ISO so you can upgrade later and you've already got it free from your activation before. Free is good, even just to have on hand. Just remember your roll back time is limited. I may need wrong about the number days, might even be 30, but don't count on it.

...if maintaining privacy is a concern and you don't want to wade through all the different screens and/or edit group policies, try "Shutup 10".

Thanks Ssnake, that should help checking the privacy settings that it feels like I need to do after each update.

It seems that after the next update, we won't be able to turn off Cortana.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3100358/w...ary-update.html

Not sure of the implications of that yet...

I'll upgrade to Win 10 sometime next year when there have been plenty of updates released to fix various inevitable issues. I'm in no rush since I'm currently running 8.1

Well, an article I read is that Windows is obliged to support Win7 up to 2020 and Win8/8.1 for a few more years after that. So that's at least 4 years... however, I have upgraded my gaming PC and the "home theatre" laptop and so far so good. A few guys on the BMS forums have reported good results with Win10 so that's a good bonus for me. I'll probably roll back my gaming PC after two weeks (can roll back up to 30 days) but at least I've "reserved" my copy of Win10. I just hope the Windows servers will still remember/recognize my setup 4 years later!

I'm creating a Win10 DVD installer now for my gaming laptop and my son's PC. The "home theatre" laptop took about 6 hours from start-of-download to a fully-working Win10 install but my gaming PC took maybe an hour, maybe less. So I guess the upgrade is internet-connection-dependent and also hardware-dependent.

Thanks for the tip! Downloading the .iso now. I bought my son a laptop with Win 8.1 and we upgraded to Windows 10. Now the thing is behaving very strangely and I intend to wipe it, restore to the factory spec to make sure it isn't a hardware issue. I wanted to then re-install Windows 10 but wasn't sure if I could get the free upgrade after the timeout. I should be able to recover the Windows 10 activation keys and use the .iso, right? OR will it still honor the Win 8.1 activation license?

EDIT: According to this it should be fine..

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...c0d6290a?auth=1

Once you activate 10, that's about it. Next time just install and skip the product key on install.
The install goes much faster and more reliably from the .ISO than the automatic update. Good to have on hand too.

What "inevitable issues"? This is not a new OS.

After 2 years (yes, 2 years...first year was as a release candidate), if manufacturers have not gotten themselves up to speed with Windows 10 driver model, then they will not do it and it is time to ditch the hardware.

The update model has changed from previous OS. No longer will MS be fixing anyone's issues, just windows inherent issues, which are mostly ironed out. These are not design issues (aesthetics, accessibility and such), which will be updated when appropriate, like a car manufacturer when they release a new model.

If your mouse is not working, it will be up to the mouse manufacturer's to fix. The OS architecture and driver framework is well defined now, so it is up for them to design appropriate drivers.

No more service packs either, and if things go as planned, no more "new" OS, but it will evolve and change within the same platform.

Clarification -

If you update an Windows 7/8.1 OEM license, your Windows 10 license will be OEM too, so it will be tied to the hardware you have at the time you upgrade. If you do the update now to get the license. it might not work if you upgrade your machine later.

If you update a machine which was upgraded with an upgrade disk, it will work if you run the W10 upgrade software, but will not install on it's own.

If you upgrade a non legitimate license, Windows 10 will have a non legitimate license that will eventually expire.

Retail licenses of 7 and 8.1 still will work as retail for Windows 10.

Actually I think at this point I will just get Win 10 whenever I decide to buy my next Alienware gaming rig. That will be sometime next year.

Can someone clarify this point:

I have a question someone may know the answer to;
Suppose for the sake of argument that I have a Drive with Windows 7 that I want to upgrade and get the ISO for but just for the fact not everything wants to run in W10 I also want to have a drive with 7 on it. Can I use the same copy of win 7 as the alternate ie. Upgraded and not upgraded, do you get a new key or is that key now invalidated. I know there is a way to have multiple OS on one machine but I don't know if it will work in the way I want to do it.

I'm sticking with 7. I just read that they disabled some hacks people were doing to stop 10 from spying on you and hacks to stop the advertising are now disabled.

You should be able to do it just fine. Generally you want the newer OS to be the first boot drive, then the older one the next, but that's more a rule of thumb and not necessarily something you have to do. So SATA 0 your Win10 drive, SATA1(or whatever) Win7, but you can do it on different partitions of the same drive if you want them both on one drive.
These instructions will show you how to keep Win 7 and then install Win 10 alongside it instead of doing the upgrade first, or so they claim. They don't say if it's necessary to be on the same drive or not, and I haven't tried it to test:
http://www.howtogeek.com/197647/how-to-dual-boot-windows-10-with-windows-7-or-8/

Once you have upgraded, nuke the machine and do a clean install of Win 10. Do this even if everything is working fine.

I may do this next year during my "spring cleaning" effort.

Has anyone rolled back to Win7 successfully?

Yup,I did a few times.Didn't have any issues.

My guess is it means you're getting 10 for free today, but at some point you'll wind up having to buy 10 in the future if you upgrade your PC enough.



The Jedi Master