Windows 10: I know what I'm doing

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Windows 10: I know what I'm doing

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

havenwaters posted:

You can still grab Win 7 from product recovery if you have a valid license key.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7

edit: Enterprise and msdn keys won't let you grab an iso. Academic keys have a separate place you go to.

Annoyingly OEM keys also won't work. Which is just Microsoft being dicks.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2015 18:58

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 17:32

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

It's not an extended trial, it's the equivalent of an OEM license with less ways to cheat your way through a major hardware change.

And the official and initial stance on the cheap Windows 8 offer was that it was an upgrade license, requiring you to install the old OS first on new hardware as well. So not a lot of gain there, while staying within the TOS.

A cheap offer to keep the eventual retail status of your license through the upgrade (in addition to the free offer) would be most welcome though, which is the real issue here.

And, goddamn, offer all the isos without restrictions and have them work with all keys that qualify in one way or another.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2015 11:27

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Sir Unimaginative posted:

Windows 8.1 should install okay against the firmware license key, but you'll need an MSDN ISO for it because Windows 8.1's media creation tool won't let you download against an OEM key.

Are you positive? When did that change?

As far as I remember, the Windows 7 iso generator didn't take OEM keys, but the 8.1 media creation tool didn't ask for a key at all.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2015 09:49

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

effika posted:

My husband gets a $199 discount on Windows through his school, and they have 7, 8.1, and 10 available.

His primary use for the computer is gaming and composing music. (Has a fancy Creative soundcard for it.)

I just built him a new machine-- should we throw 10 on it clean, or get 7 or 8.1 & upgrade? His current machine has 7 on it and works fine.

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.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 19:26

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

Upgraded to Windows 10 yesterday. Since upgrading, whenever I watch a video on an attached USB drive, the entire USB hub will reset. This means that my sim racing steering wheel and a few hard drives will disappear for 10 seconds, then come back. This was never a thing in Windows 7.

Any ideas?

Would guess that is a power issue in some way. Is it a powered hub?

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 00:39

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Kerbtree posted:

This depends on whether your base install you upgraded from is retail or not. Microsoft never really bothered to enforce the oem-single-system tie.

I expect to be able to move my 10 license, I have all my retail boxes.

The free upgrade becomes device specific, regardless of whether you started out with a retail license. You will not be able to move your Windows 10 license any more than anyone who started out with an OEM license.

In other words you can move it by installing your previous Windows version on new hardware and updating again and even that will end when the free upgrade offer ends.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 23:17

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I could live with them exchanging retail key for retail key for $40 in addition to and for the duration of the current offer.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2015 14:14

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Inverness posted:

Retail licenses can be transferred between computers, no?

What you get from the free upgrade isn't a retail license.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 20:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Philip Rivers posted:

I think they're more asking if they already have a retail license they could register on a new mobo?

Buy a Windows 10 retail license, you can move between different hardware like before, yeah.

e: actually, I'm just assuming that, but I haven't heard anything that says that changed.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Oct 13, 2015

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 20:21

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Inverness posted:

Hopefully the new build will just let me activate with my retail W8 license.

I forgot we were talking about this, so I'm changing my answer to I hope so too.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 20:45

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Void Chicken posted:

Has anyone upgraded from a retail 7/8 been told they can't activate 10 on new hardware?

That's the problem. There's no way to really verify either way since people cheating their oem license and retail key owners have to go through the same procedure to install on new hardware (ie go through the upgrade again) and we're still in the free upgrade period.

Once we'll be able to plug our old retail key into the Windows 10 installer of the regular builds and the free upgrade period is over, we'll be able to tell for sure. We might have strong indications earlier if the first thing comes through, maybe. Like if a retail W7/8 key entered in the installer isn't replaced by the fake key all upgrade installs use currently; something like that.

Certainly hope you're right.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 17:34

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Mortanis posted:

The thing is I power down my system every night and the problem has persisted for weeks between reboots.

Shut down/power up cycles or actual reboots? Because since Windows 8 that's not the same thing anymore.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 17:41

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

ThermoPhysical posted:

Anyone heard of 10 deleting registry files? A friend of mine is claiming that it did but didn't offer much else. He's already doing reset and claims that Explorer.exe no longer works.

Sounds like the sort of garbage a third party anti-virus program would helpfully shovel on your plate, to be honest.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 01:05

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Sir Unimaginative posted:

That's the fault of Microsoft OEM licensing terms. In a just world those things wouldn't exist and my opinion from last page stands.

I wouldn't be surprised if they underperform an AMD POS netbook I bought in a fit of bad decisions a few years ago whose battery is dead and whose fan prays for it.

They perform a shitload better. I have an old working E-350 netbook lying around here and there really is no comparison. As long as you're not bumping into the 2GB memory limit (too many browser tabs, basically), such systems can run smooth as hell. Whereas that netbook -best in class when it came out- is now effectively useless because all the waiting makes you want to bash in skulls.

And the origin of the 32 bit Windows installs on those also is in a thing where the sort of sleep mode where you still would get alerts for alarms and mails and poo poo (much like you would expect from a phone) wasn't implemented in x64 yet. Though that supposedly has been fixed since.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 01:27

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Pretty much everything in Windows 10 that triggered the tinfoil hats as far as privacy is concerned is getting backported to Windows 7/8.1, so that's not an argument anymore for one over the other, afaik.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2015 13:30

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Thermopyle posted:

How does that Kangaroo thing compare to a box with an Atom N330? Because I've got an old Acer Revo 3600 as an HTPC, and it's slow as poo poo.

edit: I should have just googled for some reviews. I didn't find anything comparing it to an Atom 330 (because why would someone compare it to an 8-year-old CPU?), but reviews seem to be pretty positive when it comes to performance.

Intel Atom 330 @ 1.60GHz, 2 cores, max tdp 8W, Passmark score 596, single thread rating 250
Intel Atom x5-Z8500 @ 1.44GHz, 4 cores, max tdp 4W, Passmark score 1192, single thread rating 405

Not to suggest that's the whole story by any means, but as an impression.

As someone with a z3735, I'll just say it's a massive difference. It's very suitable for the sort of things you'd do with a chromebook, but with the potential of straying out of that a bit because of Windows. Not cpu constrained really, but the 2GB ram it's usually coupled with is another story.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2015 21:49

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Stick Insect posted:

I've got a Dutch language Win 8.1 Pro, I want to use the free upgrade to Win 10 Pro and at the same time ideally also switch the OS language to English. Will this work, or will the upgrade lock me into a Dutch Windows 10?

You can just change the display language in pc settings and/or the control panel, in both 8 or 10. Don't know if this has been possible since Vista or if in Windows 7 this maybe was only accessible in non-Home versions or something, but it isn't an issue now. You can switch display languages on the fly, more or less. It shouldn't require more than logging out and then in again, at any point.

Or you can download English language windows 10 install media and plug in your windows 8.1 key during a clean install instead of upgrading, if you don't trust the language pack to do its job, but it's overkill. Just saying your key isn't tied to a particular language at all, like it was on XP.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2015 12:29

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

endlessmonotony posted:

I decided to create a Microsoft Account for my first Windows 10 device.

A day later and they're literally spamming me. No unsubscribe option in the email - which I'm pretty sure is against EU regulations - and no easily-found site option to unsubscribe either. The Microsoft Experience.

I sure want "helpful tips" for "things I can do with my device" and "useful products".

I've got a couple of Microsoft Accounts/Outlook/Hotmail addresses and in the last ten years or so I've got maybe five mails from them, mostly about updated EULA stuff. I wouldn't rage just yet over a couple of "welcome to our services" mails a day after signing up.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 22:34

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

8.1 is the better tablet OS, but nobody cares. But also fast boot, improved file copy, improved task manager and a couple more under the hood improvements over 7.

All without the force drivers down your throat behavior of 10.

If you have it, it's a perfectly fine OS you could get along with. Bit silly to buy 8.1 at this point in time.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 19:03

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

I maintain that Windows 10 is just as good a tablet OS as 8.1, Edge is much better than IE Metro and if you have trouble hitting any of the UI buttons on your tablet in Edge then you are literally Shrek.

Considering my early annoyance with 8.1 on my laptop, it's ironic that using it on a tablet taught me to love the charms bar, of all things. I'll be sad to see it go when I upgrade.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 21:48

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

spanko posted:

Am I not finding the option or is there no way to setup automatic system image backups to an external (USB) drive in Windows 10? I do a manual backups for myself but this is for a paranoid person who is bad at computers. If this isn't possible in Windows 10 can anyone recommend a free or cheap, easy to use backup to external drive solution? It needs to be a full system image backup and automatic/scheduled.

I have a test install of Veeam Endpoint Backup on one of my systems and it seems to be alright. Most free products don't do the incremental/differential thing and thus waste an inordinate amount of disk space if you want to keep several days worth of backups. Plus time backing up. Veeam does about 2GB a day in 30 min or so (in the background), which seems all very reasonable to me.

Still haven't done a bare metal restore myself though, but it is made for that. Pulled out the odd individual file, which seemed to work great.

They want an email address from you before you can download the installer, so they can upsell you corporate backup solutions. You can however unsubscribe from the mails and they seem to respect that.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2016 21:49

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Wow,very neat of the Windows 10 installer to mirror everything to a connected external display (if started from inside Windows, that is), which made it possible to install it on an old laptop with a broken screen.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2016 02:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

ApexAftermath posted:

I just wish there was more of a solid answer out there on why it happens.

Might as well be the thread title.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 23:01

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

DeaconBlues posted:

Are there are any pitfalls in installing 10 to a laptop previously running Vista?

My dad had no end of issues trying to install 10 to a Vista desktop. Needed to inject the most recent available (Windows 8) chipset drivers or something into the installer for it not to error out. Had to go with 32 bit because of that too. The installer was also picky about the old laptop drive he wanted to use. Obviously the mb didn't do uefi, which required him to disable fast boot at some point, I think. In the end, after a couple of days he ended up with a mostly functional install, apart from the fact that it would bluescreen when going into any kind of sleep mode. The fix for that would be a bios update which was not available for download anymore. I may be misremembering details, but he gave up after all that anyway.

Windows 8.1 x64 running beautifully on that machine, so, erm, I don't know.

I'm not saying that this is going to be your experience, but it's definitely not guaranteed to be pain free. A bunch of modern tech that we now take for granted could be missing from a computer from that era, as well as up to date drivers. Hell, it could have an IDE hard drive, that's how long ago Vista was.

What I'm saying is, make sure to image the machine so you can roll back easily and/or consider at what investment of time Windows 7 will suffice.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 19:29

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

DeaconBlues posted:

Hmm. Thanks for that. I'm now thinking that installing 7 might be the right way to go about this. Presumably, if I install 7 it's close enough to Vista to include some of the drivers that might be now deprecated in the Windows 10 install disc. Then if he wants to upgrade to 10 via the prompt he can do so and the installer will provision for some of the older hardware he's running.

I've got the November release of Windows 10 threshold 2 on disc and I think I'll burn a 7 disc to take around with me. I'll give 10 a go first and if it starts misbehaving I'll start again with 7. Thanks again for the advice.

Well, the reason my dad went with the usb installer is that the upgrade from inside Windows 8.1 kept crapping out and auto rolling back because of all the reasons I mentioned, so the upgrade install isn't necessarily more viable because of existing working drivers or anything like that. edit: could be, I guess.

But I'd do what you have planned, yeah. It's worth a clean go for 10 and if that doesn't work out, nothing wrong with 7.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 20:57

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Khablam posted:

Really don't think this has been an issue since pre-SP1 vista; changes to program files happened so long ago that just about everything knows it needs to get permissions and does so.

Hahaha

# ¿ Feb 20, 2016 14:07

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Khablam posted:

Do you have examples? I haven't seen the behaviour you're describing in basically forever. Steam guy is for sure performing a workaround without first gauging whether there's even a problem; I guarantee the overwhelming majority of users install in the default location and never have an issue.

Yeah, not referring to anything Steam related at all. Was just reminded in the vst thread about the drm manager installer from Waves, a major player in the synthesizer/effects plug in community, that couldn't handle this. Newly written last year. Also had a mouse driver that wouldn't function on anything other than the defaults when logged on as a standard user.

Hell, even the media creation tool from Micosoft and the updater to update your OS to Windows 10 crap out with a cryptic error code instead of properly asking for permissions when started as standard user.

Admittedly not all necessarily looking to write in the Program Files folder specifically, but same thing really; lessons which had to be learnt from Vista that... haven't been.

Plus, like fishmech mentioned, all the propietary corporate crap. It's still out there, being written as we speak.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2016 20:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

ilkhan posted:

Turn UAC back on.

Never turned it off, pal.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2016 21:01

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Khablam posted:

You have something wonky there then, because if you are running a standard account and run the tool, it prompts for admin rights under UAC and works fine.
(Unless this is new behaviour since TH2, where I did exactly the above to upgrade some family PCs)

Fair enough, I've only tried it once and the install with the apparent weirdness is now replaced with a clean Win 10 install, so I can't go figure out what was going on. All I know is all I had to do to make it work was log in with admin rights.

I'm an idiot in many ways, but I'm not the "turn off uac" idiot, anyway :colbert:

# ¿ Feb 20, 2016 23:43

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Factor Mystic posted:

the official method to suppress the notification?

Happen to have a link or summary for what that is? I'm not sure I've seen anything like that mentioned here.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2016 01:00

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Jan posted:

OEM keys are not unique -- they are issued for certain computer manufacturers (i.e.: Dell) and are hardcoded to query system information to make sure they are being installed on that manufacturer's hardware. They are not meant to be installed on any computer as retail keys do.

This is somewhat accurate for Vista and Windows 7, for keys you'd recover with software from an existing install. Never for the stickers though and the system works totally differently since Windows 8 anyway.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 23:34

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

edit: ^^^^ yeah I'm sort of glossing over that, but that a random factor too

Jan posted:

Ah, my mistake. I was basing myself on my experience setting up Win7 workstations around the office -- an OEM sticker key from a retired workstation refused to work on new one that had a different motherboard vendor, and a cursory search pointed to the OEM key being the cause.

Well, with the system you mentioned, the key on the sticker is real but not used in the factory image and should be "free" for re-use on another machine (violates TOS though) or the same machine with another motherboard. If someone did a manual install on the machine using the key on the sticker, the key is taken and a motherboard replacement can block activation. One way or another, in general a call to the activation hotline would have fixed that, though, if this isn't the umpteenth time you're trying this with the same key.

Today you can have keys "embedded in the bios" (not actually in the bios but whatever) and manufacturers don't need to use the trick with the universal image with the generic key anymore because activation can sort itself out. I don't have a lot of experience with this with computers that aren't laptops, so I might have my own misconceptions about how prebuilt desktops do this now. Thing seems to be you can software extract a legit key from a factory install now, that's the point: oem keys are now never "fake".

Another point is that I can go to a legit store and buy Windows 10 Pro, OEM version, in a box. Straight up. The key that guy bought isn't necessarily ripped of some prebuilt computer. Likely it is iffy in some way or other, depends what he paid, I don't know, but doesn't need to be.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 02:03

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Manky posted:

Filezilla is a good free alternative.

Just read a couple of days ago somwhere around these forums that it came with crap in the installer now. Don't remember what, but it sounded pretty bad.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 00:40

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Alright, I dug up the post from like two weeks ago that got me uncomfortable about recommending Filezilla:

Alereon posted:

Mostly the bundled malware, and the author being a complete shitlord about it. The exchange was something like "It's not malware, you can uncheck the box during installation" "Okay it still installs if the box isn't checked, but it uninstalls with the program" "Okay it installs if the box isn't checked and actively resists removal, but it's mentioned deep in the EULA so gently caress you and don't post about it on my forums, this is how I make money."

From the context in the thread it came from, it seemed a direct answer to the question of what was wrong with Filezilla. So I'm thinking "author" = author of Filezilla here. But I could be wrong about that. The wider discussion of whether Sourcefourge could be trusted now was also ongoing.

Anyway, that's all I've got. Any recent first hand information will absolutely trump that.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 11:18

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Orcs and Ostriches posted:

Oh cool. I don't even have a flash plugin installed.

You have, as an integral part of IE and Edge.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 19:25

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

nielsm posted:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

Does not work on Home though.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 23:55

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I'm sure Microsoft doesn't test any of their software in scenarios where you mix and match your language/regional settings. The results are always hilariously terrible. The whole app thing that came with Windows 8 just adds another separate level of atrocities on top.

Can't even consistently have 24h clock between app tiles and the corresponding apps themselves.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 14:33

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

astral posted:

I'm a fan of Veeam's free endpoint backup: https://www.veeam.com/endpoint-backup-free.html

Seconded.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 00:46

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I saw a cheap Lenovo laptop with a separate on/off button to boot into repair mode, presumably referencing a separate rescue partition on the hard drive. Fairly similar to the reset switches you have to press with the point of a pen on other electronic things.

That seemed like a sensible way to deal with that.

# ¿ May 13, 2016 16:59

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 17:32

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Head Hit Keyboard posted:

Sorry if I'm being a bit pushy with this but does anyone know? I have an opportunity to get a pretty nice SSD today and I don't want it to go to waste if it can make the upgrade painless.

If you have your windows key, you should be able to straight up install windows 10 to the ssd. Disconnect the hdd while you're doing that to prevent a bunch of random problems.

# ¿ May 14, 2016 15:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Windows 10: I know what I'm doing

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