My windows 10 installation

Originally Posted by Zloth
32!? Want!!!

It's:

1. Only for very eclectic group of people. Or..
2. An exaggeration. Or..
3. A lie. Or..
4. An inaccurancy. Or..
5. A test of the observance of the watchers (congratulations). Or..
6. An application of String theory. Or..
7. Something else. Or..
8. Even more something else. Or..
9. Even… ah … forget it.

pibbur who officially claims it was test, which everyone failed miserably, except the lazy one

W00t!! <does the Superior Strut>

Now that it's been about 2.5 months since Win10 went live, I'm thinking about getting the free upgrade. I have a fairly new and beefy computer that is 1 year old this month. My main concern about upgrading to Win10 (from Win 8.1 Pro 64-bit) is that in the past, upgrade paths have usually resulted in a lot of weird behavior that ended up NOT being solvable and in the end, I just ended up doing a fresh install.

My question to those of you who have upgraded to Win10, is the end result a good stable computer with nothing weird and inexplicable going on with the O/S?

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
My question to those of you who have upgraded to Win10, is the end result a good stable computer with nothing weird and inexplicable going on with the O/S?

I had no issue so far on two computers and I didn't do a fresh install. But, both computers were upgraded to Windows 8.1 in the past year so they were still kinda fresh.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
My question to those of you who have upgraded to Win10, is the end result a good stable computer with nothing weird and inexplicable going on with the O/S?

I've seen only one upgrade that slowly commited a suicide.
The story is logical actually, the machine was barely running win7 and after upgrading to win10 it started to give errors here and there and after a few days it went into unbreakable restart lock. That upgrade was forced by a friend and me on his father's PC - we actually hoped something like that will happen so we can persuade him to ditch the superslow "toaster" and buy a proper PC.

Anyway, if your machine is not some ancient rubbish that was highend PC 15 years ago, you'll have absolutely no problems after upgrade.
Just make sure you disable windows tips (you'll find where it is without problems). Dunno if the problem it caused (hammers CPU without any logical reason) is fixed yet, but you don't need that feature anyway.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
Now that it's been about 2.5 months since Win10 went live, I'm thinking about getting the free upgrade. I have a fairly new and beefy computer that is 1 year old this month. My main concern about upgrading to Win10 (from Win 8.1 Pro 64-bit) is that in the past, upgrade paths have usually resulted in a lot of weird behavior that ended up NOT being solvable and in the end, I just ended up doing a fresh install.

My question to those of you who have upgraded to Win10, is the end result a good stable computer with nothing weird and inexplicable going on with the O/S?

Only issue I had was the activation. There's a rare bug that can result in one of the required files to activate windows 10 to not be transferred over. This was solved easily by contacting MS support, providing proof of purchase or legal activation key for win7/8, then they provided a new activation key for win10. Yes, I said easily…seems MS support aren't as horrible as some people want it to be (which makes me believe people just accuse them of poor support before even bothering to try just because it's a big company). System will run fine even if it's not activated so it was never really an issue other than a nuisance.
Other than that, runs just as great as win 7, if not slightly better.

Thanks for all the replies and info. I guess I'll give the upgrade a shot. Sure would be nice to NOT have to reinstall all my games… Especially all my mods on various games as I have a nasty habit of forgetting all the details of mod installation about 10 seconds after I'm done.

When upgrading you have the option to keep everything or reset windows to a default state.

I enjoy a fresh install every time, so after activating Win10 after performing the free upgrade, I re-installed fresh since it takes about 10 to 15 mins tops if you have an SSD.

Do not do clean install before upgrading first. Make sure your activation is successful before attempting to clean install if you're planning to. You can check if it was successful if you go to Settings > Update & Security > Activation. If you have an error here, do not clean install before it's activated, sometimes it can take a few days.

Originally Posted by NyxVampiria
Do not do clean install before upgrading first. Make sure your activation is successful before attempting to clean install if you're planning to. You can check if it was successful if you go to Settings > Update & Security > Activation. If you have an error here, do not clean install before it's activated, sometimes it can take a few days.

I'm curious about this because I do prefer clean installs I'm just being lazy because I don't feel like reinstalling all my games (along with oblivion and skyrim mods ugh).

AFTER you do an UPGRADE install, I'm assuming you are given a license key which you can then write down and use for a CLEAN install. Do I have this right? Is this the reason you and Caddy are warning to do an UPGRADE install FIRST?

No. There is no key.

When you upgrade, Windows creates a hardware ID and stores it on Microsoft's servers. You can always reinstall Win 10 on the same hardware because MS activation servers will recognize your hardware by the ID.

If you do a clean install Win 10 will ask for a key but since you do not have one as an upgrader you can click on 'skip' at the bottom of the entry prompt.
Win 10 will then automatically reactivate (via the hardware ID thing) once the clean install has finished.

If you have changed your hardware significantly, you need to call MS and/or buy Win 10. I'm not sure how strict MS is enforcing the upgrade-bound-to-hardware policy

Originally Posted by Moriendor
No. There is no key.

When you upgrade, Windows creates a hardware ID and stores it on Microsoft's servers. You can always reinstall Win 10 on the same hardware because MS activation servers will recognize your hardware by the ID.

If you do a clean install Win 10 will ask for a key but since you do not have one as an upgrader you can click on 'skip' at the bottom of the entry prompt.
Win 10 will then automatically reactivate (via the hardware ID thing) once the clean install has finished.

If you have changed your hardware significantly, you need to call MS and/or buy Win 10. I'm not sure how strict MS is enforcing the upgrade-bound-to-hardware policy

Perfect - now I completely understand. Thank you for that.

Originally Posted by sakichop
My wife and 2 kids Upgraded to win 10 and I didn't need to help them. So in my book windows 10 is already a win.

Windows 10 runs on robots ? and they are able to get upgraded by themselves…. amazing! That is absolutely a win, ( I wonder if I should try to upgrade my boss to windows 10, the self-upgrading appears to not always work )

Originally Posted by Moriendor
If you have changed your hardware significantly, you need to call MS and/or buy Win 10. I'm not sure how strict MS is enforcing the upgrade-bound-to-hardware policy

Unless things are very different from windows 8.1, I wouldn't expect much trouble. I had to replace MB twice within a short time. No problems. The second time it was even a completely automatic process. I just had to confirm that the license wasn't used on another pc.

Pibbur who? What?

Originally Posted by Moriendor
If you have changed your hardware significantly, you need to call MS and/or buy Win 10. I'm not sure how strict MS is enforcing the upgrade-bound-to-hardware policy

Basically if you upgrade till the freebie gets over next summer, MS support should cause no problems with new activation if you changed something in your PC.
I've read many different experiences, seems that Microsoft doesn't ask too many questions, feels like they don't care much as long as you're asking for win10. Seems they desperately want to get as much people on the new OS as possible. Which won't be a problem at all, win10 is not a phone OS forced onto PC audience and as such there is no logical reason to refuse using it at all.

But when free upgrade is over with, I'm not sure how someone can prove to Microsoft they already upgraded for free when it was possible but now they had to change some hardware because it farted.
We'll see.

Originally Posted by pibbur who
Unless things are very different from windows 8.1, I wouldn't expect much trouble. I had to replace MB twice within a short time. No problems. The second time it was even a completely automatic process. I just had to confirm that the license wasn't used on another pc.

Pibbur who? What?

I didn't understand it as well. And heard stories of people who did not have problems at all, and stories where people said that microsoft didn't want to help them.
Therefore I asked on tomshardware yesterday and got an answer which absolutely makes sense and explains everything:

The answer may depend on if current win 7 pc has retail or oem version
Oem version 7 upgrades to oem 10 which is licenced for one motherboard

Retail 7 becomes retail 10 and movable if old pc scrapped ( or os replaced by Linux )

Thanks to mbarnes86 from Tomwshardware

Originally Posted by Kordanor
I didn't understand it as well. And heard stories of people who did not have problems at all, and stories where people said that microsoft didn't want to help them.
Therefore I asked on tomshardware yesterday and got an answer which absolutely makes sense and explains everything:


Thanks to mbarnes86 from Tomwshardware

For the record, I had an OEM version of Win 8.1 installed, and had no problems getting it reactivated after I had to switch the MB due to it being defect. Twice. It was still the same PC, the other component in it was not changed.

pibbur

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Thanks to mbarnes86 from Tomwshardware

That doesn't apply to Germany and probably some other countries where the court ruled a license is a license and is not food that can be eaten only once.
Meaning, once deactivated (because a PC died on you or you just felt like buying a new rig and trashed the old one), your OS installation in Germany can be activated on any other PC. OEM or retail, all the same there.

Well…if legal or not, if they don't help you to reactivate it, there is not much you can do, unless you want to sue them.

But yeah…would be interesting to hear about experiences from other Win 10 users.