Should I upgrade to Windows 10 ?

LordBritish

LordBritish

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Jan 28, 2001
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I have little over one week to decide if I want to upgrade for free.

I've been putting this off because Windows 7 Pro is working just fine for me right now. No problems at all.

You know the saying, "If it aint broke ..."

Well the only reason I would even consider upgrading is because of DX12 which games in the future will use and it probably won't be available to Windows 7.

Is that a good enough reason to upgrade?

TIA
 
Put in a smallish SSD do a fresh install using your win7 key and make sure it is activated. Remove SSD or use it for something else so long as they have a capture of your machine you can reinstall at a later date without having to use a key. Then go back to using your win7 install until you have a compelling reason to upgrade. For the record I have win10 installed on 2 of the three computers in the household and have had no issues but I understand some people do not have the desire to upgrade at this time.
 
I personally like Win10 over Win7.

I've been using it since the preview release.

Now that it has been out a while, I find it to be less problematic than Win7 has ever been.

Sure, there are still a few things that I don't care for, but the same can be said for Win7.

I would go ahead and at least activate 10 on your computer so you can move to it at a later point.
 
You should go ahead install it just to get it for free. Make an image before hand and switch back if you dont like it. You will need a start menu replacement right of the get go cause the default one is not worth loosing sleep over. 9 out of 10 people who bitch about win 10 are to fucking hard headed to just install staritback from the start. That including anti-beacon its basically windows 7 with dx12 built in. ;)
 
primetime said:
You should go ahead install it just to get it for free. Make an image before hand and switch back if you dont like it. You will need a start menu replacement right of the get go cause the default one is not worth loosing sleep over. 9 out of 10 people who bitch about win 10 are to fucking hard headed to just install staritback from the start. That including anti-beacon its basically windows 7 with dx12 built in. ;)
Click to expand...

What is wrong with the stock Windows 10 start menu?
 
cyclone3d said:
What is wrong with the stock Windows 10 start menu?
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I can list million things lol.....We dont need to go their. It has its benefits for sure (like in a work setting) but most prefer the windows 7 type. If he's used win 7 all this time, he most likely will just get frustrated. Also keep in mind we can still use the built in menu anytime we decide, i just hardly ever do. If i were using it on a work pc, i dont think it would bug me as much.
 
I updated two of PC's to Windows 10 recently and have been pleasantly surprised. The only issue I've had so far was a system warning about running out of memory I found very strange. My system has 32GB of DDR4 and I received a popup about it while playing Hitman. I never saw that message once when I was running 8.1. I checked Task manager and I was only using about 12GB of ram so maybe something weird was going on with the pagefile? Who knows. Anyway, a quick reset and I was back to playing Hitman.

If you have extra drive space you could always make an image of your Windows 7 installation in case you really don't like Windows 10.
 
Upgrade to 10, wait until the anniversary update comes out to use the new feature and tie the activation to your Microsoft account, then rollback or reinstall 7. Eventually you ARE going to want 10. When you're ready to switch to 10, just install it from your Microsoft Account activation on whichever system you are moving too. Good way to lock in the activation.
 
As stated above (at least twice from what I can tell) you can take our your current system drive, install a temporary one (assuming you have a spare hard drive or SSD you can use for this temporary task, it won't need to stay in this state), you can clean install Windows 10 on that temporary hard drive, skip the Product Key prompt when asked, finish the install, get online with it running Windows 10 then activate it using the Windows 7/8/8.1 Product Key. After that you can repartition/format/etc that hard drive or SSD and put it back to it's previous purpose whatever that is, reinstall your original hard drive and just keep using Windows 7 Pro as you've been doing.

Of course if you don't have a spare hard drive or SSD you can image your current system drive (assuming you have enough space on some storage of some kind to store the actual file itself) and then do this process with Windows 10 followed by restoring the Windows 7 Pro image, but I think it's a safe bet that most people have at least a second hard drive these days or some other form of mass storage that can be used for safely holding the original system image. There are several free drive imaging programs out there like Macrium Reflect, Clonezilla, and others. If you own a Western Digital or Seagate hard drive, each of those companies provides a slightly stripped down version of Acronis True Image for free as part of their hard drive/SSD software packages (check their respective websites for more info).

At any point in the future you can clean install Windows 10 again, on the same hardware/machine, and you'll skip the Product Key entry once more, then once the installation is finished and you're online it will automagically activate based on the fact that the activation hash is stored on Microsoft's servers - you'll never need a Product Key again as long as it's the same hardware you did the previous clean install for activation on.

But do it soon, obviously, and lock in the "free upgrade" while you still can, then make use of it at a later time if you really must use Windows 10. :)
 
I decided to upgrade however the upgrade failed so I'm still on Windows 7 right now.

My worst fear is getting a BSOD while updating and not being able go forwards or backwards (LOL). I'm sure that's happened to a few.

I'm trying to sort it out right now. Thx MS.
 
So image what you've got with something like Macrium Reflect or Clonezilla, do a clean install of Windows 10 using the Windows 7 Product Key (enter it after the installation is complete and you're online by doing the manual activation - skip the key entry during the install), then when you're all done with Windows 10 restore the Windows 7 image and you're good to go.
 
LordBritish said:
I decided to upgrade however the upgrade failed so I'm still on Windows 7 right now.

My worst fear is getting a BSOD while updating and not being able go forwards or backwards (LOL). I'm sure that's happened to a few.

I'm trying to sort it out right now. Thx MS.
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At least you got a blue screen lol With the first few public builds, the upgrade would finish and upon reboot for some people, all they got was a black screen. Fun times. They fixed the issue for the most part so hopefully you can get your problem sorted out. Did the blue screen at least give you an error code?
 
Let's see a show of hands for anyone running WIn7 who wishes they hadn't upgraded from WinXP.

"But it's not the same thing at all..." I assure you that a lot more people hated the transition from WinXP to Vista to Win7 than those who hate the transition from Win7 to Win8.x to Win10 now. Do you hear anything from the Vista haters now about how awful Win7 is now? A year from now the Win10 haters will be as forgotten and irrelevant as the Win7 haters.

If you've held out during Win8, 8.1 and the first year of Win10, you've been smart and let the issues and annoyances get worked out, just as if you skipped the fustercluck of Vista. 8.0 annoyed the crap out of me during the small amounts of time I used it on other people's computers. Win 10 does not.
 
If you had said Windows 7 Professional x64 Edition I might have almost raised my hand but that's another thread entirely - I used Windows 2000 throughout most of XP's lifetime to the point where that x64 Edition came out in late 2003-ish (since it was based on the Windows Server 2003 core with the XP UI slapped on top). I still kinda miss that OS to be honest, it was and remains to this day the fastest operating system I've ever used based on my own personal testing and benchmarks (compared to other OSes around 2012 or so including Vista, Windows 7, and some Linux distros). Insanely fast response time (using the DPC Latency Checker it basically sat at well under 50-60 µs constantly when idle, amazing), just awesome all around in my usage but the very first time I used Windows 7 - after having skipped over Vista almost entirely because it was just terrible and I still have that opinion to this day - I was hooked on 7.

Even that very first leaked beta of 7 was awesome, just blew the doors off Vista even at that point in time (around October-November 2008), it worked exactly as expected, was fast and snappy, the search worked as expected (hit Start, type dev and get Device Manager listed in a half second at most whereas Vista wouldn't even show it as a potential option for one example), and I never really had issues with it. That was the moment I stepped away from using XP Pro x64 Edition and only rarely do I look back.

I know there's peeps out there that love Windows 10, I just can't say why but I can say I'm not one of 'em. :D
 
I'd upgrade if I were you just because you can always revert and then you have WIN10 registered, more or less.

Have been using it on a couple of rigs myself awhile now with no problems lately, running WIN10 version 14393.3 on the main rig here atm.

Have been using WIN10 since the day it was released myself.

4R2SMIx.jpg
 
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LordBritish said:
I decided to upgrade however the upgrade failed so I'm still on Windows 7 right now.

My worst fear is getting a BSOD while updating and not being able go forwards or backwards (LOL). I'm sure that's happened to a few.

I'm trying to sort it out right now. Thx MS.
Click to expand...

When you say it failed do you mean it started and then just kind of stopped for no reason? When I tried up to upgrade using that annoying box they kept leaving in my system tray that's what it did for me. It started up and said it was preparing and that it was going to restart the system. At that point the upgrade window closed and I was just left sitting on the desktop. :p

I had to run Windows Update and use the Update to Windows 10 option there to actually get the update going. I don't know what was up with the system update box they stuffed in the system tray but it was useless.
 
this happened when I upgraded my 3770K/Asus Sabertooth Z77 machine. Al the USB ports were disabled.
windows-10-usb-error.jpg


I have 10 on all my main machines and actually like it now, didn't care for the interface at first but it has grown on me. My gaming machine and Server were upgrades and work fine, my Dell laptop was a clean install since it had no OS on the new SSD.
 
Hellstoaster said:
When you say it failed do you mean it started and then just kind of stopped for no reason? When I tried up to upgrade using that annoying box they kept leaving in my system tray that's what it did for me. It started up and said it was preparing and that it was going to restart the system. At that point the upgrade window closed and I was just left sitting on the desktop. :p

I had to run Windows Update and use the Update to Windows 10 option there to actually get the update going. I don't know what was up with the system update box they stuffed in the system tray but it was useless.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what happened to me! It was very frustrating. I think I must have redownloaded Windows 10 and least 4 times. I even tried double clicking on the setup.exe found in the $windows.~bt directory but that didn't work. I forgot the error it gave me but I read somewhere I can try using this MS Media Creation Tool so I gave it a try and it too failed.

I only got success after I installed updates to Windows 7.

Very frustrating and painful.

After I successfully installed Win 10, it some how got totally hossed up by some driver install which basically took out my network adapter and several other things.
I was on the verge of reverting to Win 7 when in desperation I tried restoring from a restore point and that worked !!!
If the restore didn't work, I would be typing this on Win 7 !!
 
Tiberian said:
As stated above (at least twice from what I can tell) you can take our your current system drive, install a temporary one (assuming you have a spare hard drive or SSD you can use for this temporary task, it won't need to stay in this state), you can clean install Windows 10 on that temporary hard drive, skip the Product Key prompt when asked, finish the install, get online with it running Windows 10 then activate it using the Windows 7/8/8.1 Product Key. After that you can repartition/format/etc that hard drive or SSD and put it back to it's previous purpose whatever that is, reinstall your original hard drive and just keep using Windows 7 Pro as you've been doing.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm doing as I type. Used Macrium Reflect image from Win 7 and restored it onto a spare HDD. Booted from HDD and installing 10 on it. Will yank the HDD and shelve it for future and keep going on my Win 7. Fingers crossed. :cautious:

Edit: Done, no issues per se.
 
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I just upgraded this weekend. I figured I would try the upgrade and see how it behaved before doing a fresh install. So far I am impressed. I did have a bit of trouble, but it managed to sort itself eventually.

Upgraded to 10 only to have it update and constantly loop upon restarting. I was able to get back to 7, the tried again (glutton for punishment) and the second attempt worked.

I had some VIA sound driver issues and Windows 10 actually sorted it in a helpful intuitive way. I was impressed. I have also not tested every app for functionality, but so far I am pleasantly surprised.

I have a windows phone, so the navigation have been less jarring for me, but overall I quite like UI for 10.
 
DPI said:
Yeah, that must be it. The start menu becoming a schizofrenic clusterfuck of marketing department spooge surely has nothing to do with it - "THEY H8 CHAYNGE!!!"

667463ce0c.jpg
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Funny that looks like a bunch of random things started in the background just to clutter the screen up to me.

That, or you're just not doing it right.
 
I'm on the fence about upgrading too. My dad had no end of troubles with his update, and he is pretty tech savvy. Some were driver issues which never got solved (no ethernet driver would work on his Asrock Z77 mobo so he had to buy a pci ethernet adapter), and he even lost some data although fortunately nothing too serious.
My other concern is that I'm saving to upgrade my whole rig in January when the sales are on - if I upgrade now, it's tied to my current mobo and non-transferable, is that right?


Zepher said:
this happened when I upgraded my 3770K/Asus Sabertooth Z77 machine. Al the USB ports were disabled.


I have 10 on all my main machines and actually like it now, didn't care for the interface at first but it has grown on me. My gaming machine and Server were upgrades and work fine, my Dell laptop was a clean install since it had no OS on the new SSD.
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Did you ever get that sorted on your Z77 mobo - I have an Asus Z77 V-Pro and I would quite like to use my usb ports!
 
MongGrel said:
Funny that looks like a bunch of random things started in the background just to clutter the screen up to me.

That, or you're just not doing it right.
Click to expand...
The default setup is actually pretty much that. It's a bunch of app tiles that just point to the store for download and installation.

The trick tho, is that the vast majority of home users will NEVER see this setup, as they will upgrade their current Win10 and still have their Win10 set up how they had it before (at least that is the idea). In corporate environments, the deployment folks will strip all this stuff out and have their own custom Start layout (which I know because that's what I do). It's five minutes of work to gut the Start screen.

So really, the "look at this awful mess" stuff is fine, but the reality is few people will ever see it anyway.
 
SuperSubZero said:
The default setup is actually pretty much that. It's a bunch of app tiles that just point to the store for download and installation.

The trick tho, is that the vast majority of home users will NEVER see this setup, as they will upgrade their current Win10 and still have their Win10 set up how they had it before (at least that is the idea). In corporate environments, the deployment folks will strip all this stuff out and have their own custom Start layout (which I know because that's what I do). It's five minutes of work to gut the Start screen.

So really, the "look at this awful mess" stuff is fine, but the reality is few people will ever see it anyway.
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Mine had tiles on both machines after the upgrades.

this is what mine looks like since I didn't like the tiles,

win10-start-menu.jpg
 
SuperSubZero said:
The default setup is actually pretty much that. It's a bunch of app tiles that just point to the store for download and installation.

The trick tho, is that the vast majority of home users will NEVER see this setup, as they will upgrade their current Win10 and still have their Win10 set up how they had it before (at least that is the idea). In corporate environments, the deployment folks will strip all this stuff out and have their own custom Start layout (which I know because that's what I do). It's five minutes of work to gut the Start screen.

So really, the "look at this awful mess" stuff is fine, but the reality is few people will ever see it anyway.
Click to expand...

To be honest, maybe it does that these days.

Put WIN10 on the rigs long ago, so I wouldn't know.

Even some of the newer Red Stone integration might do that.
 
I had been holding off of doing the Win 10 upgrade since it came out, and I did the install last week and I have to say, I love it! The interface that I thought looked dreadful in screenshots actually looks quite sharp during use, and a few little gltiches with 3DSMax that I had under Windows 8.1 appear to have been resolved with Win 10. I have not yet found an app that has any issues with my setup, and if anything, some such as Prepar3d run far better on my system using Win 10. Never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but kind of wish I had done the upgrade earlier!
 
Zepher said:
Mine had tiles on both machines after the upgrades.
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Oh there's tiles certainly. I'm saying the default tiles in 14393 (and even 10586) are awful. The average user won't see them though, as they are only upgrading and in upgrades the tiles shouldn't change from what the user had previously.

Windows 8.1 had a similar thing. The default Windows 8.1 wallpaper was this hideous orange. However, since most users were upgrading from Windows 8, their wallpaper simply carried over and they never saw the bright orange painpaper.
 
You can remove all of them easily with a right-click on the tiles (well, one at a time that is).
 
DPI said:
Yeah, that must be it. The start menu becoming a schizofrenic clusterfuck of marketing department spooge surely has nothing to do with it - "THEY H8 CHAYNGE!!!"

667463ce0c.jpg
Click to expand...

Yes, you can go out of your way to make it look like ass, by default the start screen does not show that many tiles, you have to enable it. The "suggested apps" can also be disabled. Not to mention you can remove ALL of the tiles if you want.

startmenu.jpg
 
UiyTcFy.jpg


My Start isn't cluttered. I don't use it much; it's hiding the shortcuts to what I use the most.
 
I use Cortana to open all the programs and files I want lately. Frees up a lot of space on the start menu and my few daily use programs are pinned to the taskbar. Nice and clean.
 
I'm biting the bullet tonight! I'll try the upgrade first but made a W7 Image and Acronis Image (two just in case of course) so worst case I'll just roll back my image after W10 is activated.
 
It isn't perfect, but I don't mind it. It's no worse than 7 or 8 were even if there are elements of both that I prefer. With a little tinkering you can make it just as useable if not moreso.
As long as you do an image backup, going back is nice and easy as well.
Let's be pretty honest, it's Windows. Outside of the Start/All Programs menu in Windows 8, things have worked 90% the same way since XP and probably 75% the same since Win95. It isn't like swapping to Linux or MacOS.
 
DPI said:
Yeah, that must be it. The start menu becoming a schizofrenic clusterfuck of marketing department spooge surely has nothing to do with it - "THEY H8 CHAYNGE!!!"
Click to expand...

If you can't be assed to uncheck a box in an options menu, yes, it's simply pettiness.
 
I'm still not 100% clear on this - if I upgrade to 10 this week (from Win 7 Home retail) but then upgrade my whole rig (around Christmas), do I lose the licence? Is it tied to my current mobo?
 
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Camberwell said:
I'm still not 100% clear on this - if I upgrade to 10 this week (from Win 7 Home retail) but then upgrade my whole rig (around Christmas), do I lose the licence? Is it tied to my current mobo?
Click to expand...

Until August 2, yes, this is true.

After August 2, when you install the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you will have the option of tying your license and activation to a Microsoft account. If you do this, you can replace your entire system and reactivate just by signing in to the new install of Windows 10 with the same Microsoft account.
 
Terpfen said:
If you can't be assed to uncheck a box in an options menu, yes, it's simply pettiness.
Click to expand...

The thing that does bother me since 8 was the dual settings menu. The Metro UI settings and Control Panel style settings. I hate the dumbed down app style settings. Can that be disabled as well?
 
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