Windows 10 upgrade notification

[Digger]

once you've registered with your email address does the option to upgrade last forever, so to speak, ie as above you can upgrade a year or more down the line?

[GlenMH]

Digger said:

once you've registered with your email address does the option to upgrade last forever, so to speak, ie as above you can upgrade a year or more down the line?

No - only a year. Although there is nothing stopping you upgrading during that year, getting the registration code sorted and then rolling back.

[Ozone]

I've upgraded 5 desktops and 5 laptops and all have been ok except one Dell Vostro 3350 today which just booted to a black screen. Plugged in an external monitor and it was ok but the laptop screen wouldn't work. I downloaded the latest BIOS firmware and it sorted the problem. Just in case anyone else has similar problems.

[Morningside]

OK. Now I have Windows 10 installed on my laptop and it all looks good but how do I make a bootable Windows 10 recovery disk incase the PC goes tits up and I need to start again.

I have my Windows 7 key pre upgrade.

[b2hbm]

Morningside said:

OK. Now I have Windows 10 installed on my laptop and it all looks good but how do I make a bootable Windows 10 recovery disk incase the PC goes tits up and I need to start again.

I have my Windows 7 key pre upgrade.

This page gives you the ISO download, either for DVD or USB drive but it does it via their "upgrade tool" (or whatever they called it)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/...

Your W7 key won't work, you will need a W10 key (several key grabbers listed already on this thread, just page back until you find one)

The big thing is to read the MS instructions first. A lot of folks have apparently got the ISO and gone straight to clean install which then won't register/activate. MS is clear you must upgrade from 7/8 to 10 via the upgrade process, wait for the new OS to be recognized & activated and then if you wish you can wipe the lot for a clean install. So just check on the "Settings" page that your build is registered & activated before doing a clean install.

Brian

[Morningside]

b2hbm said:

Morningside said:

OK. Now I have Windows 10 installed on my laptop and it all looks good but how do I make a bootable Windows 10 recovery disk incase the PC goes tits up and I need to start again.

I have my Windows 7 key pre upgrade.

This page gives you the ISO download, either for DVD or USB drive but it does it via their "upgrade tool" (or whatever they called it)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/...

Your W7 key won't work, you will need a W10 key (several key grabbers listed already on this thread, just page back until you find one)

The big thing is to read the MS instructions first. A lot of folks have apparently got the ISO and gone straight to clean install which then won't register/activate. MS is clear you must upgrade from 7/8 to 10 via the upgrade process, wait for the new OS to be recognized & activated and then if you wish you can wipe the lot for a clean install. So just check on the "Settings" page that your build is registered & activated before doing a clean install.

Brian

Thanks I will download the ISO and grab the key using magic jelly bean.

My Toshiba already had W7 built in and I don't have a recovery disk so cannot install and then update.

[Nimby]

Morningside said:

b2hbm said:

Morningside said:

OK. Now I have Windows 10 installed on my laptop and it all looks good but how do I make a bootable Windows 10 recovery disk incase the PC goes tits up and I need to start again.

I have my Windows 7 key pre upgrade.

This page gives you the ISO download, either for DVD or USB drive but it does it via their "upgrade tool" (or whatever they called it)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/...

Your W7 key won't work, you will need a W10 key (several key grabbers listed already on this thread, just page back until you find one)

The big thing is to read the MS instructions first. A lot of folks have apparently got the ISO and gone straight to clean install which then won't register/activate. MS is clear you must upgrade from 7/8 to 10 via the upgrade process, wait for the new OS to be recognized & activated and then if you wish you can wipe the lot for a clean install. So just check on the "Settings" page that your build is registered & activated before doing a clean install.

Brian

Thanks I will download the ISO and grab the key using magic jelly bean.

My Toshiba already had W7 built in and I don't have a recovery disk so cannot install and then update.

It turns out that there's no point in using Jellybean Keyfinder, Belarc etc to find "your" key. They just report the generic key in the Registry that everyone gets (TX9XD-98N7V-6WMQ6-BX7FG-H8Q99 for Home or VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T for Pro).

These keys are just to get you past the prompt if you boot install media USB or DVD, but activation will nevertheless match your unique hardware signature with the one logged when you upgraded.

[karona]

Nimby said:

It turns out that there's no point in using Jellybean Keyfinder, Belarc etc to find "your" key. They just report the generic key in the Registry that everyone gets (TX9XD-98N7V-6WMQ6-BX7FG-H8Q99 for Home or VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T for Pro).

These keys are just to get you past the prompt if you boot install media USB or DVD, but activation will nevertheless match your unique hardware signature with the one logged when you upgraded.

I've three boxes all with the same Win 10 key, different to the two above, all 'home' versions
YTMG3-N6DKC-DKB77-7MQGH-*****

[.Adam.]

So does this mean you can't do a clean install straight to Win 10 on a new machine then? I was planning on building myself a new computer around Christmas, so it will have a different hardware signature. I am also assuming that my Win 10 upgrade will work with a new computer?
Just for clarification, I will not be using the same OS on the old computer!

[Nimby]

karona said:

I've three boxes all with the same Win 10 key, different to the two above, all 'home' versions
YTMG3-N6DKC-DKB77-7MQGH-*****

8HVX7 ?? There are some more generic keys than I listed.

.Adam. said:

So does this mean you can't do a clean install straight to Win 10 on a new machine then?

Yes - if you buy a retail version. That will come with a non-generic key and activation will know not to look for a previous upgrade signature.

[GreigM]

.Adam. said:

So does this mean you can't do a clean install straight to Win 10 on a new machine then? I was planning on building myself a new computer around Christmas, so it will have a different hardware signature. I am also assuming that my Win 10 upgrade will work with a new computer?
Just for clarification, I will not be using the same OS on the old computer!

you can so long as you have the license key of the previous version of windows, you will be asked to enter it

[mp3manager]

.Adam. said:

So does this mean you can't do a clean install straight to Win 10 on a new machine then? I was planning on building myself a new computer around Christmas, so it will have a different hardware signature.

Is your current install of windows, OEM or retail?

If you have an OEM version of windows, installing windows 10 upgrade will lock it into one machine because of the hardware signature generated by that machine.
So don't install windows 10 until you build your new machine.

If you have a retail version of windows, installing windows 10 upgrade will not lock it into that one machine.
So you can install windows 10 on your current machine, try it out, build you new computer, then again install windows 10 and still get full validation.

TL/DR
If you upgrade from a retail version, it carries the rights of a retail version.
If you upgrade from an OEM version, it carries the rights of an OEM version.

Edited by mp3manager on Sunday 23 August 17:50

[.Adam.]

I purchased mine direct from Microsoft when they first released Win 8 for £25, so I guess that means I have a retail version.

[mp3manager]

Yep, sounds like it. I bought Win 7 Ultimate from microsoft.com, so it's a full retail version like yours seems to be.

[karona]

karona said:

I've three boxes all with the same Win 10 key, different to the two above, all 'home' versions
YTMG3-N6DKC-DKB77-7MQGH-*****

8HVX7 ?? There are some more generic keys than I listed.

[qube_TA]

GreigM said:

.Adam. said:

So does this mean you can't do a clean install straight to Win 10 on a new machine then? I was planning on building myself a new computer around Christmas, so it will have a different hardware signature. I am also assuming that my Win 10 upgrade will work with a new computer?
Just for clarification, I will not be using the same OS on the old computer!

you can so long as you have the license key of the previous version of windows, you will be asked to enter it

I had to build a PC for my brother yesterday, I downloaded and installed a (dodgy) copy of 7, didn't bother patching, then went and did the upgrade to 10, selected a custom install that wipes all the previous version of windows which went on just fine.

[Tim-D]

Have upgraded all our PC's, 2 desktops & 2 laptops - the only issues experienced were on a desktop -

- has two dvd-rw drives - spotted and identified by 7 no problems, on upgrade to 10 both appear in the BIOS settings but only one recognised - quick google and easily sorted by some registry edits...but this was a known and posted issue in beta testing not automatically resolved in production...

- same machine had a mysterious crash (never done it before) and oddly no operating system found on restart - oddly the SSD holdign the operating system had disappeared from the boot order - again easily fixed....

Overall liking 10 but no discernable difference from 7....as set in my ways and ignored anything that isn't desktop view..

[FourWheelDrift]

Tried to upgrade a laptop to have a look at W10. Upgrade via Windows update.

Keep getting upgrade failed code C1900101-40017 which by looking online not even Microsoft know what it means and how to fix it. It seems it might be driver related I have tried disabling driver licenses, checking device manager and letting Windows update drivers, even if updating drivers changed my 2013 ATI Radeon drivers for more updated 2009 drivers

Tried 4 times with changes above same error.

Has anyone else seen this? A Google of pistonheads and thr code gave no results for this thread.

[anonymous-user]

A while back I installed Windows 10 on my office Dell all-in-one and it went very pear shaped so gave up and so I reinstalled back to 7 using an image I made previously.

A few weeks back I installed on my Dell XPS laptop, it went very smoothly and has been perfect ever since.

So with a 50% success rate I decided to install Windows 10 on my Dell XPS2720 all-in-one at home, oh dear what a disaster.

Using the media creator tool I can get Win 10 to install and run as far as the first desktop boot, then using Windows update or Dell's own updated drivers the whole things falls over every single time and there's no way to get it to boot after this. I made about 6 or 7 attempts yesterday and every time you update using Windows or Dell drivers after the required reboot the op system dies and won't come back to life.

As a last resort I installed up to the point of getting to it's first boot to desktop, ran the Windows backup to create an image and started to install a single driver at a time to see which driver was making it fall over. Sure enough I found the driver (chipset) that was doing it, but when I used the advanced repair option to re-image the drive it all fell over again.

So I'll have a final go tonight, reinstall back to desktop and skip the chipset drivers for now. Obviously I've Googled this and nobody else is having the same issue, bloody typical.

[8bit]

Mr Happy said:

I've reverted back to 7, I gave 10 a good go but the constant failed update rollback with no way of stopping or skipping the update was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

I'll probably give it a look in a year or two once it has matured out a bit more.

I was having the same issue, I think it related to a user account on the machine. When I initially upgraded I found that for each account on the PC I had to log on as that user, let Windows do it's stuff, find the desktop environment not working right, leave it for a while, reboot and let it sort itself out. I had one account I rarely used and hadn't gone through that process with, so as a test I just binned the account and next time the PC rebooted it seemed to fix the failing update thing.

May be worth a shot for you too?