Stereodude
Not really a
It can write the image to any drive in the system, including USB drives. I usually boot from a USB flash drive and save the image to a 2.5" USB3/eSATA hard drive. I think it can save the image to a network share as well.
Windows 10
- Thread starter Mercutio
- Start date
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Thanks SD.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Much searching and reading indicates that for a long time, the ISO downloadable from MS had corrupt stuff. Apparently even brand new installs exhibit this problem, and it is not fixable by sfc or even by DISM (Deployment Image Servicing and Management) - I know, I tried. Apparently only a refresh, reset or full install can solve this problem. Since my installation is running without problems right now, and the only symptom is that I'm unable to make a recovery drive, I'll just live with it.
The ISO I downloaded April 30th for the laptop seems to be good.
SD, can you run sfc /scannow on your W10 install and report back?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Clonezilla will have the same issues as Acronis with regard to secure boot/GPT disks. There's a really easy fix if you're the one responsible for installing the OS, which is not to use secure boot and GPT, but it's definitely a problem if you're trying to image arbitrary Windows systems.
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
For clarification, is the answer to "How do I turn off notifications to upgrade to Windows?" wrong?
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/upgrade-to-windows-10-faq
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/upgrade-to-windows-10-faq
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
I'm really bugged about the bugs & annoyances in W10. Perhaps a new thread for that.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Well here's one of those hilarious new things you'd probably never notice unless you ran into it.
By default, Windows 7 prints documents "Actual Size." Duh, right?
By default, Windows 10 (and at least 8.1, though I haven't checked 8), print things "Shrink to fit" and will always shrink things at least a little tiny bit. 10 also tries to auto-rotate and auto-center by default. The amount of scaling seems to be variable and depends on the actual driver in question, but "some variable amount that's probably less than 1%" seems to be common.
My invaluable troubleshooter for figuring out the issue was actually Google Chrome, which uses its own print processing that's somehow separate from the host OS.
The result of this is that printed output from Windows 10 with default settings is never going to be 100% identical to output from earlier versions of Windows, which is hugely problematic if you're trying to print on a premade form or trying to produce identical output across different machines.
By default, Windows 7 prints documents "Actual Size." Duh, right?
By default, Windows 10 (and at least 8.1, though I haven't checked 8), print things "Shrink to fit" and will always shrink things at least a little tiny bit. 10 also tries to auto-rotate and auto-center by default. The amount of scaling seems to be variable and depends on the actual driver in question, but "some variable amount that's probably less than 1%" seems to be common.
My invaluable troubleshooter for figuring out the issue was actually Google Chrome, which uses its own print processing that's somehow separate from the host OS.
The result of this is that printed output from Windows 10 with default settings is never going to be 100% identical to output from earlier versions of Windows, which is hugely problematic if you're trying to print on a premade form or trying to produce identical output across different machines.
ddrueding
Fixture
Yup, we've encountered this issue here as well. We print plans that have an actual scale on them that is supposed to relate to reality. I've left the machine in the copy room running Win7 for just this purpose.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
It's a dead simple fix. Un-tick the boxes for"Auto-fit" and "Auto-Center" and "Auto-Rotate." But apparently two devs in my office spent something like 30 man-hours this week trying to figure out why the the output they were creating didn't match. But it's something you probably wouldn't even think to look at unless you were already tearing your hair out over it.
ddrueding
Fixture
It also has weird interactions with the print engine in Firefox, which occasionally likes to rotate and resize things.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Where are the Auto settings? Can't seem to find them. I'm using the driver downloaded from Brother's website. Does this affect only drivers baked into W10?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
It's in the system print dialog boxes, not the print drivers.
Chrome, because it's its own damned operating system, doesn't use system print dialog boxes, which is a big reason why I was able to deduce the problem as quickly as I did.
Chrome, because it's its own damned operating system, doesn't use system print dialog boxes, which is a big reason why I was able to deduce the problem as quickly as I did.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
I do see the Auto settings when I try to print from a pdf reader, either Acrobat or Foxit, but not from MS office products. Don't MS office products use the system print dialogue box?
Stereodude
Not really a
I've been trying to systematically upgrade my systems to Windows 10 before the 29th. I'm making a backup of the current OS with Clonezilla before upgrading and then one after upgrading. I started this weekend. Here's where I am:
- I found my i7-2600k system had spontaneously developed a bad DIMM of RAM from when I last powered it up about 3 months ago. It's now running 2 DIMMs for the moment. I did an anytime upgrade to Windows 7 Pro first (from 7 Home Premium) and it now has Windows 10 Pro on it.
- My i7-4770k pulled its usual freakout when I turned it on. If I leave it unpowered for too long (like >1 month) one of the BIOS EEPROMs goes bad and it loses it's mind. Once I switch it to the B BIOS chip it runs fine and I can flash A from B. However, B was the original BIOS revision, not the latest since I never updated it. Somehow in the process of messing around it booted into Windows 7 with the Intel SATA controller's settings wrong (not to RAID) and broke my two RAID-1 arrays. The B BIOS chip is now the latest BIOS and is setup correctly so the next time A fails and I flip it to B I don't have this problem. I guess I should just buy a new BIOS chip since RMA'ing it is likely to be a giant pain since it's not easily replicated. I re-setup the first RAID-1 array from within the Intel GUI in Windows which insists on copying the data from one drive to the other. That ran overnight. Apparently you can't have two arrays doing that at the same time. So the second array is now copying the data. Once that finishes I will upgrade it to Windows 10. I anytime upgraded the i7-4770k to 7 Pro yesterday also.
- My old "server" that ran XPx64 in a Gigabyte EP45 motherboard with an E5300 CPU and 16GB of RAM got upgraded to a Q9550S CPU. I clean installed Windows 10 Pro on it with a 7 Pro key I bought. The motherboard will go into a Norco 4020 case I bought a few months ago along with two 8 drive RAID-6 arrays (from my old "server" and current backup "server") and become the new backup server. I can't get any drivers working on the PCI Geforce FX5200 in it. The most recent drivers for that card are Vista x64, and they don't work. Since it's going to get connected to a KVM and basically run headless I don't really care.
- My Acer 1810T now has 10 on it. I did that one today at work. I was a little concerned about the apparent lack of drivers for the graphics of the Intel 915 chipset, but it found some driver online and installed it.
That leaves my HP Elitebook 840G1, HTPC, Zotac BI320, my parents Zotac BI320, and my Dad's Lenovo T410 laptop still to go.
- The Elitebook is a tomorrow at work project. I'm not expecting any problems.
- The HTPC shouldn't be a problem, but I'm going to restore it back to 8.1 Pro after it's done.
- My Zotac BI320 is my biggest concern. It only has a 32gb mSATA SSD and is running Windows 8.1. I'm not sure if it has enough free space to allow the upgrade. I don't really use it in Windows, mostly LibreELEC for Kodi from another drive in it, but I'll take the free upgrade while it's free. If all else fails, I might just buy another $10 Windows 7 Pro key and clean install 10 Pro.
- My parents BI320 should be no problem since I put a larger SSD in it before I gave it to them.
- My Dad's T410 I replaced the spinning HDD in my Dad's T410 with a 512GB 850 Evo for Father's Day. I'm not expecting any problems there.
- I found my i7-2600k system had spontaneously developed a bad DIMM of RAM from when I last powered it up about 3 months ago. It's now running 2 DIMMs for the moment. I did an anytime upgrade to Windows 7 Pro first (from 7 Home Premium) and it now has Windows 10 Pro on it.
- My i7-4770k pulled its usual freakout when I turned it on. If I leave it unpowered for too long (like >1 month) one of the BIOS EEPROMs goes bad and it loses it's mind. Once I switch it to the B BIOS chip it runs fine and I can flash A from B. However, B was the original BIOS revision, not the latest since I never updated it. Somehow in the process of messing around it booted into Windows 7 with the Intel SATA controller's settings wrong (not to RAID) and broke my two RAID-1 arrays. The B BIOS chip is now the latest BIOS and is setup correctly so the next time A fails and I flip it to B I don't have this problem. I guess I should just buy a new BIOS chip since RMA'ing it is likely to be a giant pain since it's not easily replicated. I re-setup the first RAID-1 array from within the Intel GUI in Windows which insists on copying the data from one drive to the other. That ran overnight. Apparently you can't have two arrays doing that at the same time. So the second array is now copying the data. Once that finishes I will upgrade it to Windows 10. I anytime upgraded the i7-4770k to 7 Pro yesterday also.
- My old "server" that ran XPx64 in a Gigabyte EP45 motherboard with an E5300 CPU and 16GB of RAM got upgraded to a Q9550S CPU. I clean installed Windows 10 Pro on it with a 7 Pro key I bought. The motherboard will go into a Norco 4020 case I bought a few months ago along with two 8 drive RAID-6 arrays (from my old "server" and current backup "server") and become the new backup server. I can't get any drivers working on the PCI Geforce FX5200 in it. The most recent drivers for that card are Vista x64, and they don't work. Since it's going to get connected to a KVM and basically run headless I don't really care.
- My Acer 1810T now has 10 on it. I did that one today at work. I was a little concerned about the apparent lack of drivers for the graphics of the Intel 915 chipset, but it found some driver online and installed it.
That leaves my HP Elitebook 840G1, HTPC, Zotac BI320, my parents Zotac BI320, and my Dad's Lenovo T410 laptop still to go.
- The Elitebook is a tomorrow at work project. I'm not expecting any problems.
- The HTPC shouldn't be a problem, but I'm going to restore it back to 8.1 Pro after it's done.
- My Zotac BI320 is my biggest concern. It only has a 32gb mSATA SSD and is running Windows 8.1. I'm not sure if it has enough free space to allow the upgrade. I don't really use it in Windows, mostly LibreELEC for Kodi from another drive in it, but I'll take the free upgrade while it's free. If all else fails, I might just buy another $10 Windows 7 Pro key and clean install 10 Pro.
- My parents BI320 should be no problem since I put a larger SSD in it before I gave it to them.
- My Dad's T410 I replaced the spinning HDD in my Dad's T410 with a 512GB 850 Evo for Father's Day. I'm not expecting any problems there.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Question: If I upgrade my W7 Ultimate to W10 now, activate, then go back to W7, will the "free" upgrade to W10 still be valid after July 29, say, in 2017?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Yea
Stereodude
Not really a
That's my understanding as well. That's what I'm going to do with my HTPC and it's my backup plan in case any of the computers I upgrade get flaky. I will restore my backup and clean install 10 later.
Stereodude
Not really a
I got 3 systems Windows 10'd since yesterday. The Zotac BI320 turned out to have a 64gB SSD, not a 32gB as I incorrectly remembered so that was no problem. I'm not sure how the SSD was half full with basically just a clean Windows 8.1 install though. I'm tempted to clean install 10 on it. My i7-4770k and HP Elitebook 840G1 upgraded fine. My HP Elitebook has a 33.12GB Windows.old folder though. :scratch:
Only my HTPC is left of my systems. Still have my parents two computers.
Only my HTPC is left of my systems. Still have my parents two computers.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Thanks. In my case, I'm dual booting W7 & W10 off the same SSD, so I have to e careful that I don;t end up with a non-bootable system both after upgrading W7 to W10, and after putting W7 back.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
What's the verdict? Install Windows 10 or not before the deadline? I'm leaning towards not because I only have one system new enough to do stuff I need to do on a regular basis. I can't afford to brick it or not have applications I'm using not no longer work. That especially includes my DOS-based PCB CAD program which works fine using DOS Box. I don't really have time for the learning curve associated with a new O/S, either, unless there are really compelling advantages to using it. Based on everything I've read in this thread, the upsides are small at best but the potential downsides are huge. I think I'll stick to 7 for the foreseeable future.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
You can always do it and back right out. That combination will have a permanent Windows 10 license. It will always re-activate if you want to go back to it. I've gone ahead and applied Windows 10 licenses to almost every machine I have, even my ridiculous file server. There's just no reason not to. It's not even like the install takes very long.
Stereodude
Not really a
So I got the HTPC upgraded to 10, backed up, and rolled back to Windows 8.1. That leaves only my parents two PCs I'm going to try to tackle them on Friday.
At the very least I'd suggest backing your system up, doing the upgrade, and then restoring the backup so you can move to 10 for free later down the road if you need to.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I just checked the minimum requirements. I don't meet them, so the decision is made for me regardless.
Stereodude
Not really a
What are the specs of your PC? For the most part anything that runs 7 can run 10, unless your processor lacks the NX bit.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Free disk space is the problem. My boot drive with 7 is a 256GB SSD. I only have about 25 GB right now, and chances are good I'll use 5 to 10 GB in the next few weeks with some work I need to do. I suppose I could get a 512GB SSD, clone my Windows 7 install on it, then install 10 over 7 on the 256GB drive (after clearing out some space). Not sure if I really want to buy another drive right now given that SSD prices are in a free fall.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
How clean is the revert back to W7 from W10? Flawless?
Stereodude
Not really a
What do you mean by revert back? On my HTPC I restored a cloned image, so it was absolutely perfect. Are you talking about using some sort of rollback feature of Windows 10?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Your OS install, Program Files and Users folders go in a subdirectory called Windows.Old. When you revert your OS, unless you deleted that folder, you get your previous Windows installation back.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
... and in one of those things I wish I had know months ago, it turns out that yes, Windows 10 absolute WILL activate almost anything. I set up a VM and activated a license key on the bottom of a scrapped Netbook. It activated.
It also activates off ANCIENT and long-since used up Technet keys too, so I'm going to deploy and at least a couple dozen VMs this weekend.
It also activates off ANCIENT and long-since used up Technet keys too, so I'm going to deploy and at least a couple dozen VMs this weekend.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Each VM I make seems to need a little over 10GB actual disk space and 2GB RAM. I guess I should've jumped on one of those 128GB Xeon rigs SD bought a few months ago.
Stereodude
Not really a
I think you can still get the parts for the same price. Natex still has the motherboards, CPUs, & RAM. Looks like the chassis are still available on eBay from the same seller too.
Stereodude
Not really a
Not for free. I'm not sure if pricing has been revealed yet.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Thanks Merc for all the info.
time
Storage? I am Storage!
What about an enterprise key? We have some sort of unlimited Windows 7 Pro key - that may be just MDSN for all I know.
I'm thinking, upgrade once, then upgrade forever? it can't be like that, can it?
Could you snapshot the VM just before entering the key and then let it continue to activate...then restore and repeat for each key or some kind of setup making use of a snapshot?
Stereodude
Not really a
I got my parents two computers upgraded to W10 tonight, so I should be completely done upgrading to 10. Aside from their super slow DSL driving me batty when Windows 10 wanted to download updates it went pretty smoothly.
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
There may never be a Windows 11....
Whatever they will call it, there will always be something new.