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robodex
Jun 6, 2007

They're what's for dinner

EoRaptor posted:

If you change hardware (MB or CPU) your OEM windows license is no longer valid, and you'll need to buy a new one. MS is pretty flexible about re-activating in the case of warranty replacement, though you will need to phone them to do this.

Could this be why I was never able to get a clean install to work? I had an OEM version of 8 and the only way 10 would activate was if I did an upgrade install from 8. I tried a few times doing a "clean" install of 10, and the only way it would activate would be if I installed 8 first and upgraded from that (even if it was a "keep nothing" upgrade.) Doing a wipe and a clean install of 10 just resulted in an error saying my key was blacklisted. I never got the magic "you should be able to reinstall 10 whenever!" thing to work.

The only thing I've ever changed on my laptop was I added an SSD and it's a legit key as it came from Dell.

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effika
Jun 19, 2005
Birds do not want you to know any more than you already do.

berzerkmonkey posted:

What is his price on Win 10? The price for Win 10 Home is $119 and Pro is $199 through Microsoft.

$0 after discount, no matter which version he chooses.

Josh Lyman posted:

I've run Win7, 8.1, and 10, and I would pick 10 any day.

Flipperwaldt posted:

Upgrading 7 or 8.1 to 10 will reduce whatever license type to a quasi OEM one, keyless and (technically) tied to the hardware. Buying 10 will possibly give you a retail license that has an actual key and can be transferred to a new machine in the future, I suppose. Just something to be aware of.

But I'd look up other people's experiences with that soundcard on Windows 10 first. Not that a Creative card is great for making music in general, but whatever, not the issue here.

I think I'll have him pick up 10, then. The number of issues in the Creative forums dropped off with the release of official drivers.

Thanks for the input, thread!

EoRaptor
Sep 13, 2003



robodex posted:

Could this be why I was never able to get a clean install to work? I had an OEM version of 8 and the only way 10 would activate was if I did an upgrade install from 8. I tried a few times doing a "clean" install of 10, and the only way it would activate would be if I installed 8 first and upgraded from that (even if it was a "keep nothing" upgrade.) Doing a wipe and a clean install of 10 just resulted in an error saying my key was blacklisted. I never got the magic "you should be able to reinstall 10 whenever!" thing to work.

The only thing I've ever changed on my laptop was I added an SSD and it's a legit key as it came from Dell.

If you swapped the HD as part of the clean install, that could have triggered a change in the calculated hardware ID. Nobody really knows what is used to calculate it, and MS has an interest in keeping it secret.

You should have been able to do a clean install after an upgrade, the only way I can think this didn't work is if you where not connected to the internet during the upgrade process, when it would try to submit the hardware id as 'known'.

Fortunately, choosing the reset windows option will produce the same results as a clean install (back up everything first!) so it's not as big an issue as it could be, but still annoying if you need to reinstall windows 10 in future.

codo27
Apr 21, 2008

Whoa! So I thought I found the fix to my read only issue, but when I changed the folder ownership all of a sudden everything went to hell. I rebooted, twice, but now every time I click on edge it just instantly crashes, start button does nothing, nor does Cortana or the notification hub. I can get into IE but it seems anything tied to the new UI is out. Yayyyy

robodex
Jun 6, 2007

They're what's for dinner

EoRaptor posted:

If you swapped the HD as part of the clean install, that could have triggered a change in the calculated hardware ID. Nobody really knows what is used to calculate it, and MS has an interest in keeping it secret.

You should have been able to do a clean install after an upgrade, the only way I can think this didn't work is if you where not connected to the internet during the upgrade process, when it would try to submit the hardware id as 'known'.

Fortunately, choosing the reset windows option will produce the same results as a clean install (back up everything first!) so it's not as big an issue as it could be, but still annoying if you need to reinstall windows 10 in future.

Yeah I'm honestly not sure. I was running insider builds before I replaced the SSD so I wasn't surprised the first time it didn't work. That being said, I tried installing 8 -> upgrading -> flattening & reinstalling fresh and it wouldn't activate. I tried that twice before I just said gently caress it and did an upgrade install again that kept nothing.

Rusty!
Aug 25, 2005

Play Up Pompey
Pompey Play Up

berzerkmonkey posted:

I'm guessing the fact that we are in a WSUS environment, I can't force an upgrade?
Yeah that would stop it

edgar_
Sep 4, 2003

kampen mot gud og hvite krist er i gang
Grimey Drawer
I just ordered a new SSD for my computer and I'm thinking of upgrading from Win 7 to Win 10 with 10 being clean installed on the new drive. Is this relatively easy to do? How should I go about the order of operations here?

Edit: Nevermind this. Looks like I can delete enough crap off my main partition to just clone it to the new SSD then upgrade in-place from there.

edgar_ fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Sep 15, 2015

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice
Has anyone else experienced a problem where right-clicking a file or folder in explorer causes it to hang and crash? I'm unable to open files with programs other than their default, let alone access the "properties" box.

It happened before when my driver needed to update for Windows 10 but now it just stopped working again out of nowhere.

berzerkmonkey
Jul 23, 2003
Just an update on my Windows 10 USB non-install problem from a couple of days ago: I've been successful with installing from USB on two occasions when I selected the option to "Check for Updates" at the prompt. I don't know what updates the system might be downloading or checking for, but it takes about 3 minutes, and, so far, the installs have gone through without a hitch. I really have no explanation for this, but I figured I'd post this in case anyone else happened to run into this issue.

Josh Lyman
May 24, 2009


Well this is great. I reinstalled Win10 because my 8.1 -> 10 upgrade wouldn't stop bugging me about updating Radeon software even though I haven't had one since a couple days after the upgrade, and now my WiFi is incredibly slow. When I run Speedtest from my iPhone 6 from my desk it's the right speed, but for whatever reason, the PC is stuck around 2.5Mbps. I would assume a driver change is to blame, but the PCIe WiFi card is a few years old with Realtek RTL8192CE chip so the Windows 10 built-in driver is the latest.

edit: I went to the card manufacturer's website and went through the old Have Disk process to install a Win8 driver from 2012. Seems to have fixed things for now...

Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Sep 16, 2015

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



There we have it, Windows RT gets a Start Menu, and that's it.

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



On the other hand, how useful is a Start menu actually on Windows RT? The only desktop software you really have is File Explorer and Office, and then a couple of administrative things.

JohnnyCanuck
May 28, 2004

Strong And/Or Free

LeftistMuslimObama posted:

I haven't used an instant messenger since smart phones became a thing. What's even the usecase anymore?

Late, but I still have a lot of people using Facebook chat, and I want to use IRC, so why not have one application handle both workloads for me?

Also I like logging in to my old 6-digit ICQ account daily, even if nobody ever messages me on it.

Jan
Feb 27, 2008

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
So, two things:

1. The memory compression thing has in fact been live since RTM was pushed out. It's definitely what's happening.
2. My issue with Chrome tabs going inactive seems to be a tangentially related feature of Chrome where it automatically discards backgrounded tabs when memory usage grows. I'm willing to bet Chrome doesn't take into account the compression store memory and just starts killing off tabs left and right despite that memory being "available". That issue page has a command line option to disable auto discard, so I did.

BattleCattle
May 11, 2014

Jan posted:

So, two things:

1. The memory compression thing has in fact been live since RTM was pushed out. It's definitely what's happening.
2. My issue with Chrome tabs going inactive seems to be a tangentially related feature of Chrome where it automatically discards backgrounded tabs when memory usage grows. I'm willing to bet Chrome doesn't take into account the compression store memory and just starts killing off tabs left and right despite that memory being "available". That issue page has a command line option to disable auto discard, so I did.

Thanks a bunch! I'll try that when I get home.

Dylan16807
May 12, 2010

Jan posted:

So, two things:

1. The memory compression thing has in fact been live since RTM was pushed out. It's definitely what's happening.
2. My issue with Chrome tabs going inactive seems to be a tangentially related feature of Chrome where it automatically discards backgrounded tabs when memory usage grows. I'm willing to bet Chrome doesn't take into account the compression store memory and just starts killing off tabs left and right despite that memory being "available". That issue page has a command line option to disable auto discard, so I did.

Huh, I'd never seen that discarding behavior, interesting idea but sounds like it needs work.

But if anything the compression should delay the point where memory looks full, right? Unless chrome is calculating memory use in an extremely wrong way.

The MUMPSorceress
Jan 6, 2012


^SHTPSTS

Gary’s Answer

JohnnyCanuck posted:

Late, but I still have a lot of people using Facebook chat, and I want to use IRC, so why not have one application handle both workloads for me?

Also I like logging in to my old 6-digit ICQ account daily, even if nobody ever messages me on it.

Interesting. All of my friends are either using hangouts or group MMS these days, so I haven't had any use for a desktop IM client. On the very rare occasions I don't have my phone with me I can get at hangouts through gmail or google+.

Jan
Feb 27, 2008

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

Dylan16807 posted:

Huh, I'd never seen that discarding behavior, interesting idea but sounds like it needs work.

It's only been in beta and dev builds. It was only in the dev build for a while, and people started flagging it more once it recently got pushed to beta, so apparently they've turned it back off to rework it a bit.

Dylan16807 posted:

But if anything the compression should delay the point where memory looks full, right? Unless chrome is calculating memory use in an extremely wrong way.

Well, I don't know what API Chrome uses to get available memory, but the discarding behaviour rarely even occurred in Windows 7. Something about Windows 10 is making it more finnicky and it always triggers as soon as I spend the 3-5GB to launch the UE4 editor. Maybe it's using just available physical memory in 10 but it included pagefile memory in 7.

IAmKale
Jun 7, 2007

やらないか

Fun Shoe
Does Windows 10 Pro still come with the rights to a VM instance of Windows 7/8? Something changed in Powershell between Windows 8 and 10 and I need an instance of 7 or 8 temporarily for some Sharepoint work coming up in the very short-term (basically my scripts produce unexpected output in Windows 10 but NOT in Windows 8).

Double Punctuation
Dec 30, 2009

Ships were made for sinking;
Whiskey made for drinking;
If we were made of cellophane
We'd all get stinking drunk much faster!

Karthe posted:

Does Windows 10 Pro still come with the rights to a VM instance of Windows 7/8? Something changed in Powershell between Windows 8 and 10 and I need an instance of 7 or 8 temporarily for some Sharepoint work coming up in the very short-term (basically my scripts produce unexpected output in Windows 10 but NOT in Windows 8).

Microsoft OEM EULA posted:

2. d. (iv) Use in a virtualized environment. This license allows you to install only one instance of the software for use on one device, whether that device is physical or virtual. If you want to use the software on more than one virtual device, you must obtain a separate license for each instance.

[...]

7. Downgrade Rights. If you acquired a device from a manufacturer or installer with a Professional version of Windows preinstalled on it, you may use either a Windows 8.1 Pro or Windows 7 Professional version, but only for so long as Microsoft provides support for that earlier version as set forth in (aka.ms/windowslifecycle). This agreement applies to your use of the earlier versions. If the earlier version includes different components, any terms for those components in the agreement that comes with the earlier version apply to your use of such components. Neither the manufacturer or installer, nor Microsoft, is obligated to supply earlier versions to you. You must obtain the earlier version separately, for which you may be charged a fee. At any time, you may replace an earlier version with the version you originally acquired.

Emphasis mine. The retail license has these same terms. If you want to use an earlier version with the same license, you must have a prebuilt computer that had a Professional copy of Windows preinstalled, and you have to uninstall Windows 10 first. This doesn't apply to volume license customers.

IAmKale
Jun 7, 2007

やらないか

Fun Shoe

dpbjinc posted:

Emphasis mine. The retail license has these same terms. If you want to use an earlier version with the same license, you must have a prebuilt computer that had a Professional copy of Windows preinstalled, and you have to uninstall Windows 10 first. This doesn't apply to volume license customers.
You know what then, I was probably confusing this with Windows 7's XP Mode. A quick search reveals that XP Mode is all but dead so so much for that.

lllllllllllllllllll
Feb 28, 2010

Now the scene's lighting is perfect!
Huh, I get the notification sound whenever a new track is played in VLC. Time to switch it off. Not the best implementation.

edit: Oh, I can turn them off individually.

lllllllllllllllllll fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Sep 18, 2015

WattsvilleBlues
Jan 25, 2005

Every demon wants his pound of flesh
Build 10457 10547 is out for Fast Ring Insiders.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/6115/microsoft-issues-windows-10-build-10547-for-pcs-to-insiders-on-the-fast-ring

One thing I've noticed not detailed there: icons for Modern apps now have more colour in them, like Mail and Store. Looks quite nice.

For some reason, this new Show more tiles option for the Start menu doesn't actually allow me to have wide tiles side by side, even though it's meant to be one of the features of this build.

WattsvilleBlues fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Sep 18, 2015

Ambaire
Sep 4, 2009

by Shine
Oven Wrangler
Alright, I got my new computer and installed Windows 8.1. It's asking me to download a few hundred MB of updates, which one do I NOT want so I don't get background windows 10 downloads or nagged to upgrade. I've been hearing some horror stories, and I don't want to 'accidentally' upgrade to 10 for another few months.

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

I just came into a much better SSD than the one I'm using now (6gb/sec vs 3gb/sec), just wondering what the best method for transferring my entire system over to that would be? Last time I had to do something like this was like 10 years ago and it involved norton ghost and poo poo. I'm guessing there's some streamlined way to do it in win10?

Inverness
Feb 4, 2009

Fully configurable personal assistant.

d0s posted:

I just came into a much better SSD than the one I'm using now (6gb/sec vs 3gb/sec), just wondering what the best method for transferring my entire system over to that would be? Last time I had to do something like this was like 10 years ago and it involved norton ghost and poo poo. I'm guessing there's some streamlined way to do it in win10?
Twice I've used Windows' built in system image backup utility.

Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> Backup and Restore (Windows 7)
Click "create a system image" on the left panel. Select a location to save the image to. A secondary hard drive is best.
Boot from the Windows 10 installation DVD/USB and use the system image restore feature to get things onto the new SSD.

RightClickSaveAs
Mar 1, 2001

Tiny animals under glass... Smaller than sand...


Ambaire posted:

Alright, I got my new computer and installed Windows 8.1. It's asking me to download a few hundred MB of updates, which one do I NOT want so I don't get background windows 10 downloads or nagged to upgrade. I've been hearing some horror stories, and I don't want to 'accidentally' upgrade to 10 for another few months.
Should just need to uncheck KB3035583: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3035583

Make sure to click "Hide" so it doesn't keep bugging you about it.

Happy_Misanthrope
Aug 3, 2007

"I wanted to kill you, go to your funeral, and anyone who showed up to mourn you, I wanted to kill them too."
Well holy crap, MS might have figured out that a line of monochromatic icons in the taskbar is going to look like poo poo

Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

wiggle wiggle




I'm still using the insider preview because I'm an idiot. I built a new computer in June and keep putting off buying a license until next month. Usually the only bad thing is occasionally moving my taskbar from the side to the bottom, and swapping the @ and " keys for no apparent reason, neither of which has been a big deal.

Last night it updated to build 10532 and things have gotten very odd. The taskbar moved to the bottom and turned black. My wallpaper disappeared and was replaced by the glowy blue window thing. The worst part is the Start, Search, and Task view icons do nothing. They highlight when I mouse over them, but refuse to accept clicks. Pressing the windows key on my keyboard does nothing too.

I read that the start menu going AWOL was a common problem so I tried logging out and back in. Tried restarting. Tried turning off my computer for 10 minutes and then restarting.

Weird, but I'd usually just wait it out until the next update. Except when I try to start Archeage (a bad game) the Antimalware Service Executable goes nuts and takes my hard disk to 99%. The game never completely launches. I can kill the process for the game in the taskmanager, but that doesn't stop the madness. With the hard drive running at 99% the computer is pretty much useless, and the only way I've found to stop it is to reboot. The advice on the archeage forums is to give glyph and archeage an exemption in the anti-virus so it won't go nuts over this sketchy rear end game. Except I can't because I have no start menu, no search menu, and no obvious way to launch the windows defender interface screen.



fake edit: Oh, it looks like a newer build is out for fast ring insiders. Maybe I'll just switch to the fast ring and . . . nope. The 'open action center' icon on the taskbar isn't working either.

Ambaire
Sep 4, 2009

by Shine
Oven Wrangler

RightClickSaveAs posted:

Should just need to uncheck KB3035583: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3035583

Make sure to click "Hide" so it doesn't keep bugging you about it.

Thanks. Doesn't look like that's the only one; I'm going through the list of updates it wants to install and clicking more info for every single one, and KB3044374 says "Update that enables you to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10". Better hide that one too.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Angela Christine posted:

My wallpaper disappeared and was replaced by the glowy blue window thing. The worst part is the Start, Search, and Task view icons do nothing. They highlight when I mouse over them, but refuse to accept clicks. Pressing the windows key on my keyboard does nothing too.

I read that the start menu going AWOL was a common problem ... with the hard drive running at 99% the computer is pretty much useless, and the only way I've found to stop it is to reboot.

Lol yeah definitely waiting until early next year to upgrade my primary desktop/laptops to Win10.

dont be mean to me
May 2, 2007

I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars


Hadlock posted:

Lol yeah definitely waiting until early next year to upgrade my primary desktop/laptops to Win10.

That's preview version problems, though. Happens sometimes when you run a preview OS on a computer you actually do stuff with.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

I'm running Win10 on an old laptop of mine and I like it

But yeah if the Start button doesn't work, in any version of windows, there are obviously some serious issues that still need to be addressed. That's only one step down from "display cuts out at random" or "mouse and keyboard drivers uninstalled at random". If the right mouse button context menu only worked 60% of the time, or the Copy-Paste functionality only worked 20% of the time, I could understand that, but the START button? loving :lol::lol::lol:

A Real Happy Camper
Dec 11, 2007

These children have taught me how to believe.
if the start button isnt working in a preview build it's not going to hit the public windows 10 release because that's kind of the entire purpose behind having an insider program, to catch that poo poo before it get released.

Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

wiggle wiggle




Captain Novolin posted:

if the start button isnt working in a preview build it's not going to hit the public windows 10 release because that's kind of the entire purpose behind having an insider program, to catch that poo poo before it get released.

Yes, except none of the buttons work, so I can't actually report this bug. As far as they know everything is fine. :toot:

A Real Happy Camper
Dec 11, 2007

These children have taught me how to believe.

Angela Christine posted:

Yes, except none of the buttons work, so I can't actually report this bug. As far as they know everything is fine. :toot:

You can post on the insider forums from a web browser. If they can't find a workaround it's likely to get noticed by someone who can check it out.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum?auth=1

Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

wiggle wiggle




Captain Novolin posted:

You can post on the insider forums from a web browser. If they can't find a workaround it's likely to get noticed by someone who can check it out.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum?auth=1

Nice. Thanks.

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

Inverness posted:

Twice I've used Windows' built in system image backup utility.

Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> Backup and Restore (Windows 7)
Click "create a system image" on the left panel. Select a location to save the image to. A secondary hard drive is best.
Boot from the Windows 10 installation DVD/USB and use the system image restore feature to get things onto the new SSD.

Thanks! Gonna try it later.

Happy_Misanthrope
Aug 3, 2007

"I wanted to kill you, go to your funeral, and anyone who showed up to mourn you, I wanted to kill them too."
e:wrong forum

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JohnnyCanuck
May 28, 2004

Strong And/Or Free
What are you guys using to easily switch audio playback devices on 10?

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