Windows 10 A breath of fresh air.

[MikeDunn]

Out of interest how much space does Windows 10 take up when installed?
Curious as have a 32Gb SSD primary drive.

To quote myself off the previous page 

The OS is 11GB

Now ... you need to be a bit careful, as you will rapidly run out of space otherwise.  Lots of tricks & tips on redirecting various items to other drives.  I keep Users on another disk, and don't use virtual RAM (but you can send that to another disk too).

[Oldman]

Apologies Mike, I missed that.
I currently have 7Gb clear so may not be able to do the upgrade.
All my documents and photos are either on the cloud and stored on an external stick. Don't know if I can move Office or not.

[MikeDunn]

No worries ...

I'd not mess about with trying to relocate Office though ... shame you didn't deploy to the other drive.  Although if you still have the media + license, you could uninstall & reinstall ...

Might be worth thinking about a new (larger) SSD though ?  Assuming you can replace it & can boot off media with the Win10 installer on it ?

[Oldman]

Cheers  every thing came preinstalled apart from Office but should be able to download it again asI only got the computer this year.Version of Office is 365 with the cloud storage, same as is on my phone.
As I type this am copying every thing to the other disc.

[PostModN66]

Sorry, but when you do an upgrade ... ... 

If you want a totally clean build, you need to d/load & save the installer (to USB or DVD), make that bootable, and select a clean build.  Or buy a new disk & do it to there ... SSDs are cheap enough these days for a decent size for the OS.

Yes, as  I explained above (several times  ) I didn't do an upgrade but did a "fresh" install exactly as you describe - hence being surprised to find files still there (especially as on the menu it says "all files will be deleted"!!)

I think I will do it again, but this time use some software to destroy all data on the hard disk before booting from the USB, to make absolutely sure.

Cheers  Jon 

[Caz]

I think I will do it again, but this time use some software to destroy all data on the hard disk before booting from the USB, to make absolutely sure.

Cheers  Jon 

I downloaded the whole thing (both 32 and 64bit) from the Microsoft website and burnt it to a DVD and have installed from there onto my old WinXP laptop.   

If you look at the install menus an option window comes up with various choices one of which is to format the donor hard drive, if you want to do a completely clean install then choose that option.  I just let it install over my WinXP and I still have all my old files and programs available.  I actually managed to run my old copy of Firefox that was in the "windowsOld" folder after Win10 was installed.

I've only installed Win10 to see what it was like and whether it would run on my 7 year old Dell laptop, using the MS Edge browser is a little slow but Firefox works fine.   

[MikeDunn]

Cheers  every thing came preinstalled apart from Office but should be able to download it again asI only got the computer this year.Version of Office is 365 with the cloud storage, same as is on my phone.
As I type this am copying every thing to the other disc.

Ohhh, Office 365 ... shouldn't be much on your disk then for that ...  Personally (and this goes just as much for Google's cloud-based apps as M$) I don't trust them with my data ...  You give them permission to data-mine it when you store it with them, (well, why else are they offering you something free/cheap ?  ); if my data is worth things to them, they can damn well pay me    And it's not as if they never lose it either !  Just check out the reports of them managing to corrupt stored data ...  But each to their own

[Trev]

Hi Caz,
For you to be able to try Win 10 on a computer running XP, did you have to do the download from your Win 7 Dell and then burn to disk?

Was there any issue with the system picking up that it was going onto an XP machine?

I've got an old computer running XP and wanted to give Win 10 a try on there.

Thank you

Trev

[PostModN66]

I think I will do it again, but this time use some software to destroy all data on the hard disk before booting from the USB, to make absolutely sure.

Cheers  Jon 

I downloaded the whole thing (both 32 and 64bit) from the Microsoft website and burnt it to a DVD and have installed from there onto my old WinXP laptop.   

If you look at the install menus an option window comes up with various choices one of which is to format the donor hard drive, if you want to do a completely clean install then choose that option.  I just let it install over my WinXP and I still have all my old files and programs available.  I actually managed to run my old copy of Firefox that was in the "windowsOld" folder after Win10 was installed.

I've only installed Win10 to see what it was like and whether it would run on my 7 year old Dell laptop, using the MS Edge browser is a little slow but Firefox works fine.   

Yes - as I say (above, about five or six times), did the completely clean install option and it still left old Windows on....hence my surprise.

Cheers  Jon 

[Railwaygun]

so if you installed over XP, how did it validate itself against an MS installatuion ( it looks for validated win 7/8 installs)?

[DELETED]

I just logged on quickly but have been watching this thread since I "pre-booked" my upgrade some time ago (well watching anything W10 related really).  I just can't wait to get rid of win 8 / 8.1 -but really all I want from it is a proper start bar back (hunting for something so simple as the power-off menu on mine is a mission most times).  I just gave up the hope of anything as simple a user interface as windows XP now.

I'm a tad worried though:  My pre-booking said I don't have to pay anything because I'm an 8.1 user -but worried I will have to now.  Also, Sony have issued model numbers tested with no issues and whilst the serial number on mine is oh-so close, it's no cigar and it says not to install because of potential compatibility issues with my VAIO.  I'm not sure what to make of that because it talks about all this new web browser stuff, which I don't use because I'm adamantly Firefox, and I don't use any on-line Microsoft account guff.  My laptop is fairly workmanlike, very latest office should be OK?  I use Corel for photo editing. Kaspersky should be OK?

...Would I get simple games like Solitaire and mahjong back?  I miss very simple thing like that since going 8 > 8.1.

[Oldman]

I have just cancelled my upgrade because there is a possible issue with doing a factory reset and on further investigation it appears that I will loose Media Player.

[Caz]

Hi Caz,
For you to be able to try Win 10 on a computer running XP, did you have to do the download from your Win 7 Dell and then burn to disk?

Was there any issue with the system picking up that it was going onto an XP machine?

I've got an old computer running XP and wanted to give Win 10 a try on there.

Thank you

Trev

I used the link posted on this thread and selected the option to download now.  From memory you have to select which package, I selected the top one and then it asks which language etc.  It then offers you the choice of Win 32bit or 64bit so download whichever you need, my laptop is 32 bit but I also downloaded the 64bit for a friend.

At no time did it query that I had a WinXP machine even when installing (I've never had Win7 or Win8).  Burn the image image file (iso) to a DVD, don't just copy it in file mode, it needs to burnt as an image.  Once you have it burnt boot up with the DVD in drive and it should boot to the Win10 install option.

Even if you try a completely new install it still saves your old windows install in "windows_old" so you can still access the files and documents etc.

One caveat is that you need at least 2Gb of memory or it will be VERY slow, I've got 3Gb installed and haven't had a problem although the new Windows Edge browser is slow but Firefox and Opera run fine.

You will have to eventually buy a licence for Win10 as I think the install without a valid serial number is time limited.   So far I'm really pleased with how it runs, runs faster than my XP sp3 did in the end and that is using a standard 2-1/2 inch 500Gb hard drive.

[austinbob]

I have just cancelled my upgrade because there is a possible issue with doing a factory reset and on further investigation it appears that I will loose Media Player.

Which bit of media player are you worried about losing. I never used it for music but did for DVD's but there is a DVD player in Windows 10.
You might want to check this out in a bit more detail before you cancel your upgrade!!

[Trev]

Many thanks Caz, much appreciated.