Windows 10

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Stereodude

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Mercutio said:
... And you have to start with the November 2015 Installation media, which I have but was generally pulled from public access.
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I thought they put it back? Most of the articles I've read say they put it back on Nov 24th. However, when I attempted to use the MCT today I wasn't given any choice of which version to download (beyond 10, 10 home single language, and 10 N). Is that 1511 TH2 or not?

Also, how do I get 10 Pro installation media or does "10" cover Pro and standard?
 
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Stereodude

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Mercutio said:
The media creation tool will let you create a 32 and/or 64 bit ISO of either Home or Pro.
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It sure didn't give me the option of downloading 10 Pro when I ran it on one of my i7's running 7 Home Premium. I will have to try it on my Windows 7 Pro laptop later.

Any insight on my other question as to whether it's downloading 1511 TH2 or not?

Edit: I tried the MCT software on my Windows 7 Pro laptop and it also did not offer me Windows 10 Pro., just Windows 10.
 
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Will Rickards

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When I just used the MCT to create a usb disk, it offered Pro or Home when I was in the installation process.
It didn't offer it during the media creation I think. I think it just makes one that does both.
 
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Will Rickards said:
When I just used the MCT to create a usb disk, it offered Pro or Home when I was in the installation process.
It didn't offer it during the media creation I think. I think it just makes one that does both.
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Okay, thanks. What build of Windows 10 did you get?
 
mubs

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So, if one has a spare W7 key, can one download W10 and do a clean/fresh install with said key?

Due to various reasons I've decided to go with W10, but not cold turkey. My goal is to install it on a separate drive from W7; keep W7 as the production machine for now and gradually switch over once the W10 install is complete with all additional programs / utilities. This means dual-booting W7 & W10. I would hope this will also be possible.
 
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As far as I can tell, this is perfectly acceptable, but if you use it that way, I don't believe you can reactivate that key for Windows 7.
 
mubs

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Thanks Merc; that W7 key would be dedicated to W10. It would be different than the key used for my production machine. So you're saying I can do a clean install using a previously unused key?
 
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MCT = Media Creation Tool. I expect that's the program you used to download the ISO. Reportedly it only downloads the 1511 build from Microsoft now, so you should have the right one already.
 
mubs

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I used the MCT to download the W10 ISO on Feb 22. Just finished installing & activating it. It's build 1511. It took my unused Technet W7-Pro key just fine. The whole process was slam-dunk easy. I've turned off most of the privacy leaks, but still need to install Spybot Anti-Beacon etc. and of course all of the other programs I use (MS Office etc.).

They've hidden some things like Disk Management, but I just go into settings and type that in the search box and it comes up, so I'm good for now.

Thanks all for your help!
 
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Hit my first gotcha. W10 says Ethernet connections cannot be set to metered, only Wi-Fi can. That screws me royally till I figure out how to deal with it.
 
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mubs said:
I used the MCT to download the W10 ISO on Feb 22. Just finished installing & activating it. It's build 1511. It took my unused Technet W7-Pro key just fine.
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Thanks for the confirmation of what build the MCT downloaded.
 
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Handy, that's an awesome find, it'll certainly help me. Will do that tomorrow. It's been a long day. All major programs I need have been installed in W10 today!
 
mubs

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Why are screen icons so blown up in W10? They're compact, small and neat in W7, just the opposite in W10. Are W7 icons not compatible natively with W10?

The visuals in W10 suck. W7 is so compact, tight, neat, W10 is majorly disappointing on the UI. I guess a lot of tweaking will have to be done.
 
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Stereodude said:
So you were able to "free" upgrade a Windows XP install?
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Yes, the end result is an activated copy of windows 10 pro.
The basic process is set your computer date back in time, install the tech preview, activate that carefully (no time update), and then install the latest windows 10 build.
It basically activates like all the people that installed the tech preview back when it was a preview.
I honestly don't understand why the free upgrade was not for xp systems too. Nobody wants those xp installs hanging around.
 
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Stereodude said:
It seems like a how to pirate 10 Pro guide to me.
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Ditto.

Will, as for why the upgrade was not for XP as well, I can think of two reasons.

One is that XP came mostly on machines that cannot run 10, whether by lack of critical instructions (PIII's, S478 P4's, AXP's, etc) or by way of simply not being able to have the hardware resources to run it adequately (LGA775 P4's, Pentium D's, single-core A64's). There was the odd dual-core Athlon 64 or Core2Duo, but those typically came with Vista and had XP slapped on because Vista sucked then.

The second is that it's been more than a year since XP got its support cut off, even on zero hour of Windows 10's release.

The better question to me is why they didn't extend the courtesy to Vista customers. They got a raw deal all the way around, and it's not like 10 is much different from Vista under the hood. Most machines that came with Vista can easily run 10. I suppose they didn't bother in this case because Vista users are so few and are likely happy with what they have.
 
mubs

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I had W7 & W10 dual booting peacefully. Yesterday, I had to restore the W7 image that was made shortly before installing W10. As I expected, now there's no dual-boot menu, system boots straight into W7 :(

I set the W10 partition active and tried to boot from it, fails with NTLDR not found.

Any thoughts on how I can get it back? Boot from W10 DVD, then try repair option (if it exists)?

TIA.
 
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mubs said:
I had W7 & W10 dual booting peacefully. Yesterday, I had to restore the W7 image that was made shortly before installing W10. As I expected, now there's no dual-boot menu, system boots straight into W7 :(

I set the W10 partition active and tried to boot from it, fails with NTLDR not found.

Any thoughts on how I can get it back? Boot from W10 DVD, then try repair option (if it exists)?

TIA.
Click to expand...
Why would you expect W10 to still work after restoring the Win 7 image? I'm sure you overwrote boot.ini and other relevant files.
 
Mercutio

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XP was the last version of Windows to use NTLDR and boot.ini. Contemporary versions of Windows use Boot Configuration Data with GUIDs to find bootable Windows installations. Editing BCD entries by hand is a PITA, but EasyBDC is just what it implies and will probably fix you right up.
 
mubs

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A big fat Havana cigar for Merc! Thanks buddy, problem fixed!

I first tried (before Merc posted) to boot from the W10 DVD, but oddly, it would not boot, and kept booting from W7 on the SSD. Then I tried EasyBCD, but couldn't make sense of it. Also the website only kept talking about XP, Vista, W7, etc. I then searched for W10 on their site and found mention of support for W10 in the latest versions.

Then in W7 I assigned a drive letter to the W10 partition, ran EasyBCD, asked it to look in the W10 parition, updated the BCD. When I rebooted, I saw a message from W10 that something was not properly digitally signed, etc. So I booted from the W10 DVD and did a repair, and now everything is fine except that the multi-boot menu is no longer the W10 GUI menu but a character menu, which I don't care about.

I have since re-imaged W7 and W10 separately, and both of them together. Thanks Merc!
 
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Has anyone found any kind of cause or even correlation for the "Critical Error: Cortana and Start Menu are not working" crap that seems to happen all the time on Windows 10 machines? My lab PCs don't seem to have a problem, but it's far and away the most common problem I see on Windows 10 machines.
 
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