Free Win10

[woodchip]

While looking for the cheapest license to activate my win 10 install I came across a article on Toms Hardware that said microsoft is letting you use the code from previous windows to activate win10. I tries it from my win 7 os and dang if it didn't. So my win 10 is now activated from a older os and I'm a happy camper.

[Tunnelcat]

Yeah, I gave you the ZDNet article on that very topic in your other formatting post. Apparently, no one at MS turned off the update servers. I'm guessing they were left running on purpose to get as many people onto Win 10 as possible. Thanks for confirming that the free upgrade still works. Since I've got Win 7 Pro, they'd better give me Win 10 Pro.

My problem is that my copy of Office is old so once I update my computer to Win 10 I've got to fork over the cash, $129, for a new version. Not going for the subscription version either. I can usually milk more than 3 years use out of Office anyway, which is the break even point.

[woodchip]

I think when you downloaded win 10 to fd, you have a choice of either home or pro as do you have choice of 32 or 64 bit.

[Tunnelcat]

I found that out. Now I've got a question for Krom. The computer I'm going to upgrade has a partition on the main OS drive for the HP Recovery information called "E". I would like to delete that partition before I upgrade. What's the best way to do that? If I go to Win 10, I won't need it anyway. This system has 2 SSD's in a RAID configuration, so the OS only sees one drive, other than that little extra partition HP created.

[Krom]

Bunch of ways of doing it, usually I'd say just do the advanced option during windows setup when it asks where to install which will let you delete all the partitions on the destination drive, once it is empty you just click go and it will automatically fill the drive with the C:\, EFI and recovery partitions. Other options would be using a boot disk and any partition editing utility, but the likely need for a RAID driver may complicate things all around (including the windows installer itself actually).

[Tunnelcat]

How about deleting the partition using Win 7? Or would just letting the installer wipe everything be simpler?

[Krom]

If you delete it in windows 7, once you get around to the windows 10 installer it will leave that space empty/unpartitioned, you probably don't want that.

You can delete it in windows 7 and then expand the C: partition to fill the remaining space ahead of time, but its generally easier to just let the installer work with a blank drive to prevent it from doing anything odd/stupid with the EFI and recovery partitions.

[Tunnelcat]

Ok, I'll do it that way. Sounds like less of a hassle.

[Tunnelcat]

One more question Krom. This system appears to have a Legacy BIOS as far as I can discern. HP has hidden identifying it in all the usual places, even in ~Windows/Panther. So I'm guessing no UEFI. Will that be an issue?

[Krom]

Nope, Windows 10 can boot from legacy bios/mbr just fine and the installer will automatically detect the method in use. It also means you won't get an EFI partition (just the main and recovery).

[Spidey]

So can I still get a free upgrade to Windows 10 from 7 on my 2 DELLs, I ask because I don’t have the product keys, as they are embedded in the UEFI BIOS chip?

I do know the process of having to do the upgrade first and then do the full install, but I’m not sure if it will work with my DELLs.

In fact on my media PC, I’m only going to do the upgrade, but on my main work computer I will probably go ahead and do the full install, after the upgrade.

Krom?

[Krom]

The way it works from what I've gathered online is if you don't have your key, you can do an in-place upgrade which then registers the hardware with MS' servers, and then you can format and do a full install without providing a key and it will just automatically activate when it recognizes the hardware fingerprint. But doing that is unnecessary; windows 10 has built in reset and refresh features. One will refresh the OS as if you were doing an in-place upgrade, it runs through all the files and defaults the majority of OS settings while preserving the installed programs/users. The other reset option blows away all installed programs, files, users, drivers, etc and wipes the OS drive back to as if you had formatted it and installed windows fresh (but it preserves updates so you don't have to do them again). The full reset option is pretty much just as good as formatting the drive but doesn't break activation and can be done over and over again whenever you need it.

I would just run the in-place upgrade and see how it handles afterwards, and if it is good enough than just call it done. Only bother with a full reset if there is a bunch of bloatware leftovers installed that you want to completely erase.

[Spidey]

Thanks, that’s what I gathered as well, just don’t want to be stuck at some point having to buy a key.

Yea, I will probably give the system a try with just the upgrade for a while, and if I have problems…then go with the full. (considering the amount of programs I use, avoiding a full would be nice)

Side questions…
1. Should I reformat my thumb drive to NFCS before downloading the media creation tool?
2. Is this the correct tool for upgrading my PC?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/softwar ... /windows10
3. Should I uninstall Office 2003 on my media PC to avoid any problems, because I have heard that it will not run under Win 10, but is there a chance it will run in compatibility mode?

Thanks again

[Krom]

Looks good, if you just run the update you shouldn't need a USB thumb drive at all, the media creation tool is only for doing clean/new installs or installing on a different computer. Although if you are doing multiple computers it can save you some downloading, but you still don't need to go through all the hoops to make it bootable for upgrades.

The upgrade tool itself does a check of your existing software and lets you know if anything won't work if you upgrade, if it doesn't say anything about office 2003 then I wouldn't worry about it.

Worst case for windows is if you would have to buy a key from the gray market for $20. I've seen hundreds of people do it and the worst problem anyone had was they sometimes needed to call Microsoft's automated activation number to manually activate the first time.