I plan on upgrading my MB and CPU from amd to intel but keeping my harddrive. I don't have a install disc or anything but I do have my windows 10 product key. How would I go about doing this?
View 1 RepliesSo my original motherboard (a G45 express chipset from 2007~) doesn't support overclocking, only supports LGA 775, and has a maximum of 300W. It needs replacing pronto. The thing is, the windows is a OEM copy, so the key is bound to the motherboard. Now I heard that if you phone up Microsoft and tell them that the old motherboard broke, and you bought a new one and now windows wont work, they often just give you a new code and disable your old code?
Will this still work in the windows 10 era? As soon as the old windows key is disabled will my current windows install just break? URL... So I just read that you swap the boards, install windows, and wait until it asks for the key
I have a laptop that came with Windows 8.1. The hard drive failed and has been replaced with a new hard drive. If I want to install Windows 10 on this laptop, do I first need to install Windows 8.1. and then perform the upgrade to Windows 10, or can I just install Windows 10? Will Windows 10 use the Windows 8.1 license key in the BIOS to activate? Or will this not work unless I first install Windows 8.1. and then upgrade to Windows 10?
This computer has never had Windows 10 on it.
The computer has a new unformatted hard disk that has never had Windows 8.1. installed.
I have a windows 7pro system that I have used for about 3 years. A fairly substantial mix of software installed over time has predictably slowed down performance enough that a clean OS install is in order. I also have a SSD I would like to install as the primary C drive as well as the update to windows 10.
There are two ways to go about this, and am not sure which is the most reliable or cleanest way.
a) I can install the SSD then reinstall win7, and 3 years worth of OS patches. Wait around until Microsoft notifies me of availability of windows 10, install windows 10 and then install all the application software.
b) I could upgrade to windows 10 get a license key(?). Then install the SSD, next reinstall windows 10 and finally all the application software.
It seems that I cannot keep a website open if I load another one. For example, to prove it I have started this thread on this website, and then I paused to open Ebay. Ebay opened OK but this website disappeared and so it seems to happen in most cases. How do I keep several websites open without having to reload them?
View 1 RepliesI get to the advance boot menu of my windows 8 laptop, select boot from USB and go through putting in my product key and then I select UPGRADE not CUSTOM. it then proceeds to give me this message: "The computer started using the Windows installation media. Remove the installation media and restart your computer so that Windows starts normally. Then, insert the intallation media and restart the upgrade"
So following the instructions I remove the USB and click close in the bottom right of the window, and then another window flashes too fast for me to read and then takes me back to the original windows set up screen with the big install now button. I then exit out of this window and confirm I want to stop the installation. At this point the USB has been removed and the laptop restarts. Am I supposed to put the USB back in while it is restarting? When I land back on the home screen I repeat the process of holding shift and restarting and selecting the USB to boot from and the vicious cycle continues. I really don't want to have to do a fresh install of windows 10 as I don't want to lose all of the files. I can back everything up worst case scenario but I would like to just upgrade as I never received the upgrade sign in the bottom right months after windows 10 was released, so I took it upon myself to make an ISO.
I'll soon be upgrading my PC to Windows 10 pro and while doing so I also purchased a dedicated SSD for the OS as well as an SSD for games. I plan to back up the old info from my HDD to an external and just wipe the HDD to use as extra storage. Obviously this means that all the drivers I installed when I first build the machine will be gone and I'm a little intimidated by the process of searching out what drivers I'll need for this new install.
I can't be 100% sure that I'll locate my mobo's driver install disk, however I have located the mobo on the manufacturers website where I have access to it's Windows 10 dedicated drivers. Everything is a separate download there, however, compared to the disk install which was a simple click and go so I'm not sure exactly what I need, what Windows will install automatically, etc. Some of the drivers say they need to be installed via a usb boot drive which is find strange. [URL] ....
I'm back to running Windows 7 on my system. Along time ago, I moved the Windows 7 user profiles from c:/users/... to d:/users?... When I updated to Windows 10 (Get Windows 10), the update worked, but it created and used a new profile on the OS drive (c. Went back to Windows 7, and everything is fine. I need to know how to end up with a Windows 10 install that keeps and uses my existing user profiles. Perhaps it's a two step process... update from 7 to 10 and then reconnect or point to the old user profiles.
View 9 RepliesI currently have an MSI board with B150m chipset. I am changing it to Z170m from MSI. I have windows 10 and Ubuntu 15.10 installed in dual boot mode. If I change the board, would everything work fine? Would I need to do anything before?
View 1 RepliesI haven't tried it myself (as I upgraded THEN did a clean install before this article appeared) but assuming it works this can be a big time saver.
View 4 RepliesA year ago I bought a Lenovo Yoga 2 that came with Windows 8.
Unfortunately, I upgraded to Windows 10 several months ago. It has been such a nightmare I want Windows 8 back.
Can I just buy a new copy of Windows 8.1 and clean install it on my laptop? Someone told me once its been upgraded to Windows 10 that I can't do that, but that just doesn't seem right.
I'm not very savvy when it comes to doing a reinstall. I'm not sure what to buy and I want to make sure trying this won't brick my computer. OEM, Full, etc seems like there is so many things to consider when trying to buy just a regular old version of Windows 8.1 ...
I have a few laptops, all of them are the same specs except for a few with a different GPU. All of them run the exact same software. I'm planning to upgrade them all manually to 10 first to register the machine, then create an image so in case a drive goes belly up, I'll just restore it from the image created instead of installing all the software one by one. I'm going to take one machine, sysprep it then keep a copy of that image for restoring on to the other machines.In this case would it just reactivate properly on the newly cloned machine?
View 5 RepliesBought a W10 Pro licence yesterday to upgrade from W10 Home. Just running the install wizard and i'm getting:
"Ready to install. To recap you've chosen to install Windows 10 Home."
Just a text error do we think or something more sinister? I don't want to go through the whole process only to replace Home with Home!
I'm planning to upgrade my Win7 laptop to Win10 next week and I'd like to know if there is an option for clean install (Delete all files, fresh windows settings, old windows moved to "windows.old" folder) from Windows Update or do I have to download Windows 10 Media Creation tool?
View 8 RepliesIf I decide to do a clean install of Windows 10, can I just disconnect my Data HDD from SATA/Power during the process? This would be really ideal since I only have docs/installers/music/videos/photos and could even backup my current steam library. I don't have an external drive to back up anything with, and I don't see why it'd be needed here.
I feel like the internal drive is acting similar to how an external drive acts anyway
When I built my PC I only got a 250gb ssd, figuring that it would be enough for the time being. I have been having issues with what to keep and what to get rid of on there.Is there a way to convert my (C drive to raid 0 keeping everything installed or will I have to format and reinstall everything. Also, could I do the same with my 1Tb secondary drive so I won't have to re-download everything as I have a slow internet connection.
View 1 RepliesOn Window 8.1. Boosted the install which a lot of people are doing by clearing SoftwareDistribution/Download and running the cmd prompt.
Downloaded the Windows 10 update, as soon as the Preparing to Install dialogue was done, the computer restart, trying to install a normal Windows 8.1 update instead.
Once I am booted up again, I get this error [URL] .... and try the fix.
Once I try and redownload the update again, it skips to 100%, then fails the update with the error 80070643 being reported.
Just a few final comments about the free upgrade.
1. Upgrading does not allow an installation with dual boot option.
2. Windows 7 is gone after one month. If you don't like it, too bad.
3. My "legacy" Dell colour laser printer will not function with Windows 10. It works flawlessly with Windows 7 and getting a new printer gets rid of the saving plus a lot more than the savings of a free W10. I will pass on the "free" upgrade.
I have a laptop and a desktop with a 120 gig ssd and a 64 gig SSD respectively. Both computers have conventional hard drives as drive D. I have two 250 gig SSD's on the way. What is the best strategy for moving to the new SSD's and preforming the clean install of Windows 10. The desktop is running Windows 10 insider preview 130 and the laptop is on Windows 8.1.
View 5 RepliesUpgraded to windows 10 pro via the media creation tool...its activated and going pretty well..so now i want to format my hard drive and clean install it...how can i do this safely? and will it be deactivated if i do a format?
View 1 RepliesI have a retail copy of windows 8 on my desktop which I recently upgraded to win 10, I was wondering if I can use that windows 8 key again to install windows on a laptop since it is no longer on my desktop?
View 1 RepliesHave installed Windows 10 on two desktops, so decided to download and install on laptop. Laptop is currently on and shows 67% on Configure settings and 91% overall. There is no light flickering except a slight flicker about every 20-30 seconds showing action on hard drive and it has been at 91% for over an hour.
View 4 RepliesCan i delete my old windows data? How can i free C drive?
View 2 RepliesI just updated Windows8 to Windows10 and my dvd/cd device is not detected anymore. When I go in the BIOS I see the device, but in windows explorer, I don't see the dvd device at all.
View 10 RepliesI'm currently running a PC on Windows 8.1. Of the course of it's use, I've had numerous problems with installing drivers and other software and have tried multiple times to clean install the OS from the disk. I've gotten to the point where I can't install most software I download for some reason and I can't get Windows update. Any type of sfc, dism /RestoreHealth, or other commands of the like always return unfixable errors. Would my problems be fixed by choosing the "clean install" option on the upgrade or would lingering system files cause me trouble down the road? If the latter is true, is there a way to use my upgrade on a new SSD I plan to buy?
View 1 RepliesI'm about to build my first desktop, and I have a laptop with Windows 10 (upgraded from 7 which it came with). I don't plan on using the laptop anymore, so is it possible to install the laptop's hard drive into the desktop then move the Windows install to an SSD? If not, should I just buy a Win10 key or would it be possible to contact Microsoft about transferring the OS over?
View 1 Replies