Is time running out on upgrading from Win 7 to Win 10?

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kindasmart

[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm running Win 7 pro x64 on two machines. i3770k (atx) 32GB and i4770k (micro-ATX) 16GB. Both with a 256 GB Samsung 840pro SSD.

Do you feel the free Windows o/s upgrade will go away when Win11 launches officially as a lot of machines can't, or won't be allowed to run Windows 11? Or do you feel Microsoft will still want to continue to move as many people as possible to Win10 and away from Win 7 and 8.x even if they can't be upgraded to Win11?

Yeah, Yeah, I should have upgraded years ago but ... saw no need, lazy, F the man, I'm paranoid, I'm OCD/ADHD, I'm incompetent, spyware, skared of killing system and losing win7pro-key, telemetry, I'm retarded, and of course I'm lazy and stoopid.

As far as upgrading goes....any vital tips, tricks, best practices, gotchas. etc I should be aware of?

Use the MS Win10 "create install media tool" web site or download ISO directly?
Fresh install?
Burn ISO to DVD or USB drive or?
Don't enter Win7pro key until reboot number 26. (or never, etc)
Don't create (how to bypass) MS/MS store account.
Reverting UI back to Win7-like (aka start menu and traditional desktop). <<<--- important as I'm dumb.
What Windows "features" to turn off and/or nuke?
What browsers, ad-blocks, telemetry blocks, etc to install?

ANY general advice on configuring the O/S after that? Drivers, configs, etc... I just realized that it's been 8+ years (May 2013) since I installed windows and don't remember what I did/had to do.

Thanks in advance.
 
kindasmart said:
I'm running Win 7 pro x64 on two machines. i3770k (atx) 32GB and i4770k (micro-ATX) 16GB. Both with a 256 GB Samsung 840pro SSD.

Do you feel the free Windows o/s upgrade will go away when Win11 launches officially as a lot of machines can't, or won't be allowed to run Windows 11? Or do you feel Microsoft will still want to continue to move as many people as possible to Win10 and away from Win 7 and 8.x even if they can't be upgraded to Win11?
Click to expand...

The free upgrade actually still works even in the Windows 11 beta. You can upgrade directly from Windows 7 to Windows 11 and end up with an activated copy of Windows 11. The hardware checks during Windows 11 install are easy to bypass, and once you do that, Windows 11 will install and run great on any computer that can run Windows 10 64-bit. The current 22000.xx beta versions are already RTM builds, meaning the only difference between the Windows 11 beta and what will be released on October 5th is a cumulative security update.

If you have doubts about the future of the free upgrade, and have never run Windows 10 on that system before, then stick a spare drive in there and do a temporary Windows 10 install using your Windows 7 key. Once you've installed Windows 10 and activated it at least once on a particular system, that system will have a digital license forever. If you ever install Windows 10 on there again in the future, it will automatically activate. Then pull the spare drive and go back to 7 for now if you really want... I will say though, that as much as I loved Windows 7 when it was current, it's getting more and more painful to go back to it. Pretty soon it will feel like going back to XP, which is REALLY painful now, even though I liked XP back in the day also.

Drivers are a non issue. Even drivers as old as Windows Vista (64-bit) work fine on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 99% of the time
 
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Why bother upgrading? If what you have suits your needs, stay there. All the new versions are being dumbed down for the sake of people used to mobile phones.
 
GotNoRice said:
The free upgrade actually still works even in the Windows 11 beta. You can upgrade directly from Windows 7 to Windows 11 and end up with an activated copy of Windows 11. The hardware checks during Windows 11 install are easy to bypass, and once you do that, Windows 11 will install and run great on any computer that can run Windows 10 64-bit. The current 22000.xx beta versions are already RTM builds, meaning the only difference between the Windows 11 beta and what will be released on October 5th is a cumulative security update.

If you have doubts about the future of the free upgrade, and have never run Windows 10 on that system before, then stick a spare drive in there and do a temporary Windows 10 install using your Windows 7 key. Once you've installed Windows 10 and activated it at least once on a particular system, that system will have a digital license forever. If you ever install Windows 10 on there again in the future, it will automatically activate. Then pull the spare drive and go back to 7 for now if you really want... I will say though, that as much as I loved Windows 7 when it was current, it's getting more and more painful to go back to it. Pretty soon it will feel like going back to XP, which is REALLY painful now, even though I liked XP back in the day also.

Drivers are a non issue. Even drivers as old as Windows Vista (64-bit) work fine on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 99% of the time
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that^^.
and if you download the iso and run setup from it, it will bypass the tpm check without any fiddling.
 
This is kind of horrible advice Wat. No one should be sticking to OS's that don't get updates anymore if they are connected to the net.

Backup your data, just incase, and then try just upgrading your Win7 to Win10 if your Win7 install is 64-bit anyway. The worst that can happen is it fails or doesn't work, but you backed up anyway. So you can then just do a clean install and restore your data from your backup.

I've had pretty great success upgrading Win7 to Win10 without issue.
 
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Why is it horrible? If you have a car that is paid off and still works fine, why get rid of it for a new one?

If your goal is to show off and impress the chick's. Maybe you are right.

If you want your car to get you back and forth from your daily job, then issa loco.

The 'security' aspects of newer windows are overblown. I could run a copy of win xp and office 2003 and be connected to the internet without any problems.

I wouldn't recommend that for a large corporation with employees that spend all day cruising Facebook. But for any reasonably intelligent person, yeah, I stand by it.
 
Wat said:
Why is it horrible? If you have a car that is paid off and still works fine, why get rid of it for a new one?

If your goal is to show off and impress the chick's. Maybe you are right.

If you want your car to get you back and forth from your daily job, then issa loco.

The 'security' aspects of newer windows are overblown. I could run a copy of win xp and office 2003 and be connected to the internet without any problems.

I wouldn't recommend that for a large corporation with employees that spend all day cruising Facebook. But for any reasonably intelligent person, yeah, I stand by it.
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You clearly have no clue on what you talk about. Running out of life OS on internet is similar to driving your paid 1940 vehicle on the highway, no safety whatsoever. First crash you have, you most likely die. Of course with the exception that the internet is far more dangerous place than the average highway. It contains unseen dangers that just wait for you to pass by. It's more like driving in Fallujah with road side bombs ready for you.
 
If you don't drive down the porn and pirate highway you'll be fine.

For some, a brand new self driving tesla is a great choice, it allows them to not pay attention. For someone who knows how to drive, its just fluff.
 
Wat said:
Why is it horrible? If you have a car that is paid off and still works fine, why get rid of it for a new one?

If your goal is to show off and impress the chick's. Maybe you are right.

If you want your car to get you back and forth from your daily job, then issa loco.

The 'security' aspects of newer windows are overblown. I could run a copy of win xp and office 2003 and be connected to the internet without any problems.

I wouldn't recommend that for a large corporation with employees that spend all day cruising Facebook. But for any reasonably intelligent person, yeah, I stand by it.
Click to expand...

Your continued car analogies are as obnoxious as they are irrelevant. If you don't personally care about the risks involved with running a vulnerable OS, that's fine. Coming on here and telling others that the risks don't matter, however, just shows us all that you don't know much beyond tinkering with your own computer inside your own little bubble.

But that's okay. I make good money fixing the problems that people like you create.
 
Wat said:
If you don't drive down the porn and pirate highway you'll be fine.

For some, a brand new self driving tesla is a great choice, it allows them to not pay attention. For someone who knows how to drive, its just fluff.
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Not true. Hackers regularly target ad services and inject payloads to them so you can get infected from any regular website that serves ads. Meaning pretty much all of them. Even if the website itself hasn't been hacked which can also happen. Another technique which is becoming common is infecting social media plugins which start to be everywhere.

If you block ads and disable javascript, Win7 can be a little safer but all it takes is a malformed jpeg image header and you're owned.
 
GotNoRice said:
Your continued car analogies are as obnoxious as they are irrelevant. If you don't personally care about the risks involved with running a vulnerable OS, that's fine. Coming on here and telling others that the risks don't matter, however, just shows us all that you don't know much beyond tinkering with your own computer inside your own little bubble.

But that's okay. I make good money fixing the problems that people like you create.
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Ooh, an e-peen swordfight is brewing!!

Is this where I am supposed to say: " I make more money than you and my job is telling IT people why thier attempted upgrade wrecked a multimillion dollar piece of production equipment."

Stay working at the help desk, the real world is a lot more complicated than you think.
 
Wat said:
" I make more money than you and my job is telling IT people why thier attempted upgrade wrecked a multimillion dollar piece of production equipment."
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Nice shifting of the goal post. So now we are talking about niche production equipment and not systems people actually use for any kind of normal task? Maybe you should include that tidbit next time when you brag about how using Windows XP is safe. I wonder if the person running Windows 7 who started this thread is running it on a piece of "production equipment"? :rolleyes:
 
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GotNoRice said:
Nice shifting of the goal post. So now we are talking about niche production equipment and not systems people actually use for any kind of normal task? Maybe you should include that tidbit next time when you brag about how using Windows XP is safe. I wonder if the person running Windows 7 who started this thread is running it on a piece of "production equipment"? :rolleyes:
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In reality the wats are what cause minor things like half of the US power grid being taken down by script kiddies or poisoning the water supply. Yeah, no wonder Windows7.
 
Deadjasper said:
Windows XP is perfectly safe so long as it's not connected to the Internet.
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No it's not. It's still suspectible to a plethora of local attacks. A single usb stick to a computer for a few seconds and boom, you're owned. And before you say anything, there are several cases in history where usb sticks came infected straight from the factory.
 
Wat said:
And windows 10/11 are completely immune from such attacks?
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No OS is "completely immune" from attacks. New vulnerabilities are discovered all the time. If your OS is still supported, then those vulnerabilities usually end up getting fixed.
 
And if you are not an idiot, you won't fall for the phishing email that utilized those exploits anyway.
 
Wat said:
And if you are not an idiot, you won't fall for the phishing email that utilized those exploits anyway.
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I actually agree in general. I've not used AV for a long time now. Never had any problems. Soon I'll retire my 5+ yo W7 install due to lack of gpu driver updates and game compatibility.
 
Wat said:
And if you are not an idiot, you won't fall for the phishing email that utilized those exploits anyway.
Click to expand...

Most email clients display images in emails. Those images aren't actually attached to the email, but linked from external servers just like images that you view on a webpage. That "image' itself could contain compromised code and is displayed automatically the moment you open the email. No need to click on anything. That's just one example of the many ways people could be infected running an OS with unpatched vulnerabilities.

What you don't seem to realize is that there are ways for an unpatched system to get infected, even if you don't do anything "wrong" or "stupid". You're not immune from vulnerabilities simply because you are "smart". You could simply not use that computer to access the internet, but that's not a realistic security solution for someone still trying to use it on their primary computer. It will only get worse over time as there are no longer any updated browsers available for XP or Vista anymore, and I doubt browsers will support Windows 7 for much longer either.
 
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All my email clients (phone/computer) have the 'show images' off. You have to click on them to see them. That was the norm going back to dial-up days.

Maybe the free email programs show images by default or something, I dunno.
 
... anyway, Win10 is way easier to get Setup than Win7. Most things will just auto install and grab drivers through Windows update. Won't require you to do much of anything. Might want to check if you Mobo's support page has newer drivers than what Windows update pushes... but likely everything will just work well enough to do that after the fact... Windows 10 is kinda awesome like that :)
 
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