Should I upgrade to 10, or keep 7?

[Nyarlathotep]

So tomorrow is supposed to be the last day for getting the "Free 10" upgrade?

Ok, well I gave two separate PC's... actually 3 if you count my girlfriends; but I want to focus on mine.

One has Windows 7 Home Premium. Its used primarily for things like email, browsing the internet, and video streaming. Sometimes I'll do some gaming on it...

Its an i5-2500K, with 8GB DDR3-1600 and a Radeon HD6950 2GB; with an older model Plextor 256GB SSD alongside an old WD 1TB HDD. I have no money for hardware upgrades at this time.

Second PC is my main rig, used primarily for Gaming.

Its an i5-4690K overclocked at 4.7ghz; with 8GB DDR3-1600 OC'd at 1866. eVGA GTX 770 4GB FTW; two Samsung M.2 series SSD's (500gb 950 Pro & 512gb 850 Evo) along side a Black Edition WD 1TB HDD and a high end Sound Blaster card...

This one is running Windows 7 Ultimate.

I know absolutely nothing about Windows 10.

I work for an I.T. company who deliberately steers its customers AWAY from Windows 10 on the excuse that "its still not finished/its still got bugs/its not user friendly/etc etc etc" while our tech manager keeps arguing that 10 is flawed, full of security concerns and that it gives out users personal info, etc, etc...

So instead my company pushes our customers to keep using Windows 7.

But in the past couple of months we've had more and more customers start coming to us with legitimate desires to upgrade to 10 or just flat out purchase a new PC with 10. We just had a client upgrade their entire business to Windows 10 last month.

SO.

I still don't know squat, about Windows 10...

I don't want to have to go and redo my entire PC (either of them)... its just too much hassle to go through the whole format/reinstall process at this time. For starters, my gaming rig has too many heavily modded games that I just don't want to risk messing up cause then that would just completely corrupt all my save games, etc...

Then there's my girlfriends computer, sitting in the same room as mine. I don't want to risk her missing a chance for an free OS upgrade if it'll actually benefit her... but at the same time, she won't know how to use it.... and she'll beat the living crap out of me if it involves wiping out all her "precious stuff"; and having to reinstall all her favorite games, etc etc etc...

But if the upgrade can be done in a way that keeps all our data and installed programs intact?

Is it actually going to be worth it for me to give up my Friday night to do this? Cause I don't think I'll have time to do it tonight but I just haven't had the time to really look into it until today...

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Actually today is the last day I believe
Upgrade or not :/
This is SevenForums not TenForums so take a wild guess

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Ah...

Google and MS.com says its July 29th.

Did they change it to the 28th?

Yes, this is Sevenforums.

I am a Windows 7 user.

Hence why I'm here? I thought this was the place for 7 Users to ask their questions?

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
The 29th could be true but could also mean it expires that day
Today would be a safer bet as the last day.

For a secondary machine 10 would be fine.
I personally would not upgrade if I only had one machine and actually relied on it daily

 

[z3r010]

I'm using 10 in a production environment and think it's great, a few bugs at first but everything works great now.

Why not upgrade and try it, if you don't like it you have 30 days to roll back.

 

[torchwood]

Hi Nyar,
Well as you work for an IT company, you'll possibly know about Acronis or Macrium?, create a system image.
Then take the plunge, it'll certainly make sure you DONT get girlfriend hassle
Either way to get your FREE W10 it needs to be up and running BEFORE the deadline.

Yours could take a fair bit of effort as you've HEAVILY modded it, and it might not be perfect from the go.

Roy

 

[Microfix]

Hmm.. I'm sticking with Windows 7 purely on the basis I KNOW EVERYTHING WORKS! that I need to use.

I do have windows 10 on an old HP G60 Test laptop and to be honest, I dont like it and much prefer LXDE but, I can keep it if Windows 10 changes for my better in the future.

It really is a bit late in the day to be deliberating whether you should upgrade or not considering that if you do not like windows 10 after activating with your windows 7 license you may not get the 30 day option to rollback to previous OS and even if you do will the license activate under windows 7 when allocated to windows 10?? Perhaps others can clarify for sure.. cut off date 29th July??

It's your choice an no-one elses.. I downloaded the 'media creation tool' to download windows 10 onto a bootable 4Gb USB flash drive and installed it from there. Then activated it using my old windows 7 Home Premium key once installed.

There's a walkthrough somewhere on the forum to assist you should you go that way.

Heard so many horror stories on the upgrade side, better to clean install IMHO

( I prefer LXDE due to me as the end-user having far MORE control over Windows 10's telemetry/ reporting/ locked in apps etc..)

 

[ThrashZone]

on creating a system image well before upgrading
The roll back process has a horrible success record
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html

 

[Microfix]

oh the microsoft servers are going to be HOT over the next 28 hours or so..98% of downloads halting etc..

Agree with imaging the drive first (backup/backup & Backup, 1st rule of thumb)
but my concern is, does the 30 day grace period still work after July 29th? or is that only for Pre-Anniversary editions?

Once a Windows 7 key is activated in 10, can the user revert back and use the key in 7 after 29th July??

(apologies for the off topic)

 

[Layback Bear]

The only way to ever know is to try W-10.
Some like W-10 and some don't.

I would recommend trying W-10 on its own drive. Giving it a fare chance to do it thing without being encumbered with any thing else. Install the programs you normally use and see how things work for you.

Jack

 

[ThrashZone]

You... can always reactivate a win-7 license
The 30 roll back is nothing but a very bad system restore process and it should not be relied on as the only means to recover the previous install

 

[Brds7t7]

I'm staying clear of the free upgrade, not sure what will happen to retail upgrades after the 29th. Will it be transferable and obtain the rights of the original base licence? Some say yes, others say the upgrade is tied to the hardware it's activated on. Nobody knows 100% for sure, so I haven't bothered. There's nothing in 10 that makes me go wow anyway.

If I change my mind in future and it appeals to me more, I'll just buy a retail version, at least then I know I can do what I want with it.

Tried a recent anniversary update build in a VM and it's definitely an improvement over the November update, but still hasn't made me want to upgrade yet. I still have a few years left on 7 and I'm happy with it.

As others have said, do a full system image using Macrium and try it out and see what you think. Different strokes for different folks. You might love it and have nothing to lose.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Oh yes, I would definitely make a back up Image of my current installations..

Also, IF, i were to do a clean/fresh install of 10, it would likely be on my main rig, the 4690K as that has all the most recent hardware in it... as well as a NVMe SSD to take full advantage of what 10 has to offer for SSD's.

Catch being though that, thats the rig with all my games, some of which are pretty heavily modded (Skyrim, Fallout4, etc) ... one of them has over 200+ mods installed, and it would just be a huge nightmare, to have to go and redo all that after a fresh install of Windows. My only option would be to make back up copies of the various game installation folders and mod manager folders... then install those fresh then copy/paste the backups over the new installs...

In all, I could be looking at, at least 2 nights worth in work for just that one.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yep a clean install is always suggested so indeed be prepared to start all over with everything really

 

[Brds7t7]

I don't really have much experience with upgrades, I've never bought an upgrade licence. Every Windows version I've owned, I've only ever bought Retail licences and clean installed. Not as much of a chore these days as it was in the Windows 95 days! :roflmao:

I've seen some people say the 10 upgrade went very smoothly, but for others it's been a nightmare. :banghead:

 

[PooMan UK]

I've been a computer engineer for 20+ years now and I'm still a firm believer in "if it's not broken don't fix it" Although win10 has its pros it has in my opinion more cons. In the past year I have taken off or reversed by request more Win10 installations that I have installed and often many of them that decided to stick with win10 or were past the 30 day reversal asked me to install the likes of "classic shell" etc. to make it work more like win7. Hopefully by the time win7 comes to its end of life MS will have ironed out all the win10 issues but I doubt it very much..... I suppose we'll have to wait and see

 

[ThrashZone]

This was a nice read
Microsoft removes policies from Windows 10 Pro - gHacks Tech News

Part of this thread
http://www.sevenforums.com/news/398...indows-10-anniversary-update.html#post3269421

 

[ThrashZone]

The Don't miss out on win-10 free upgrade banners are gone now
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

[pjc123]

Image Backup...Oh yeah let me repeat, Image Backup.

I will have to repeat what others have said. Absolutely make an image backup first. Actually make two image backups using two different pieces of image software. Believe me, having worked in computer support for twenty something years and after being burnt in the past because the latest version of a particular image backup software that used to work, now refused to restore, I learned my lesson. Personally I use Clonezilla and Window's own image backup program (Not sure, but that may only be available with the Professional version of Windows). Clonezilla is great because the operating system being backed up is never loaded, so no conflicts with open files, etc. I use it for all my Windows and Linux computers, both desktops and laptops, many with multiple hard drives or using SD cards or other types of solid state memory.

Case in point. I waited until last month before going ahead with the upgrade, thinking that things might have stabilized, but my Win 7 to Win 10 desktop upgrade was a disaster, with different Blue Screens of Death during each boot. Clonezilla saved the day. I reverted back to Windows 7, then did a File (Not an Image backup) to an external hard drive, made a list of all my programs and their settings, and did a clean install. I usually do clean installs anyways; just got lazy this time. My computer is now blazingly fast, but I am sure it is not because of Windows 10, but because the clean install removed a ton of old stuff and cleaned up the operating system; I had been running Windows 7 since it was first introduced and installed and / or removed a ton of programs in that time.

Now for the question, should I upgrade. I guess that is a personal decision. For me the number one reason to do so was be running the latest actively security patched and developed version of the operating system. You know damn well they will be putting more time and effort in supporting the current OS. The fact that it was free was an added bonus. As far as Win 10 itself, it is just like WIn 7 with some cosmetic enhancements. Does the same things as Win 7 did, just took me a little time finding where they moved a couple things in the menu system. All my programs still work. I know you can't turn every privacy stealing thing off, but I was able to turn most of the privacy related data collection items. No different than my Android apps monetizing my web searching. I am on Linux most of the time anyway, so it is a moot point.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I appreciate all the advice everyone has given me.

I have one more question though.

My primary rig has a Samsung 950 Pro m.2 Series NVMe SSD which is currently my primary boot drive with Windows 7 Ultimate on it.

However Win7 was not fresh installed on it. Instead it was imaged over from an older HDD installation... so the Samsung is not properly configured with GPT.

Could I partition off say 100GB of space as a seperate partition. Reformat that and redo it all properly and do a fresh and clean installation of Windows 10 onto that?

Thus then I could keep my Windows 7 temporarily on its seperate Partition... Spend some time learning about Windows 10, copy over things like my Steam Folder, etc...

Then when ready, wipe out the 7 Partition and redo it and merge it back into the 10 Partition?