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Does Win10 need to be physically INSTALLED before July 29? Or just ISO downloaded?

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If there's an in-place upgrade option that won't affect my Win 7 programs/data, then what is the 8GB flash drive for and how exactly would I use it?
 
Craig234 said:
If there's an in-place upgrade option that won't affect my Win 7 programs/data, then what is the 8GB flash drive for and how exactly would I use it?
Click to expand...

I don't know. Windows has always been: boot off other media for a fresh install, run it from within Windows for an upgrade (assuming we are talking about a supported upgrade). And that has always worked as expected for a Windows 10 upgrade, for me.
 
Svnla said:
I have a quick question for the experts/gurus.

So I have Dell laptop with Win7 Home Premium and an OEM license (sticker in the back). The best way for me to do is to run the Win10 tool to upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and then later, do a clean install, correct?

Is that better than do a clean install of Win10 right now because I read that clean install of Win10 may not work on OEM license?

TIA.
Click to expand...

Correcto. Sometimes using the OEM key on the bottom of the machine can surprisingly NOT work when trying to activate Windows 10, so do the upgrade from within the activated Dell image.

Then you can clean install happily.
 
Craig234 said:
If there's an in-place upgrade option that won't affect my Win 7 programs/data, then what is the 8GB flash drive for and how exactly would I use it?
Click to expand...

Some people have trouble with the Windows 10 upgrade assistant and find the installer on the usb key or dvd made with the media creation tool is better at upgrading to Windows 10 from within Windows 7. It's a different install procedure before the first reboot.
 
Craig234 said:
If there's an in-place upgrade option that won't affect my Win 7 programs/data, then what is the 8GB flash drive for and how exactly would I use it?
Click to expand...

The 8 Gb USB thumb drive would be for use with the official Microsoft .iso file, for creating a bootable Windows 10 installation media. So that you could disconnect the existing Win7 boot drive & connect some other spare hard drive (while power is off) and then boot from the 8 Gb USB thumb drive to begin the installation process.

A second option would require a 32 Gb or larger USB 3.0 thumb drive for creation of a portable "Win-to-Go" installation. Aomei Partition Assistant can accomplish that installation function (using the Windows 10 .iso file + running any supported Windows version). Boot from that USB thumb drive and activate that copy of Windows 10, using the printed-out Win7 product key. Which should be sufficient for obtaining ongoing Win10 ownership rights, including using on a standard SATA hard drive or SSD. If no USB 3.0 port is available, it will be kind of sluggish running off a USB 2.0 port.
If your PC includes the boot drive selector option (such as F12, F11, F2, etc.) you could simply leave the Win7 boot drive connected and select the 32 Gb USB thumb drive to boot the system.
Install Windows 10 and activate before July 30.
 
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Craig234 said:
Given the upgrade is tied to the MB, and I'm using an 8 year old AMD 965, I'm wondering if it's even worth upgrading.
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That's a fine CPU in terms of performance - Phenom II X4 965. Much faster than my Athlon II X3 435 actually. Definitely worth the upgrade.

Plus Windows 10 is slightly faster than Windows 7.
 
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Ketchup said:
I don't know. Windows has always been: boot off other media for a fresh install, run it from within Windows for an upgrade (assuming we are talking about a supported upgrade). And that has always worked as expected for a Windows 10 upgrade, for me.
Click to expand...

All I want to do is preserve the free license - not actually use 10 now.

So, if I have an option to get an 8GB flash drive, and install 10 on it from my Windows 7 system, without affecting the Windows 7 system, that's what I'd like.

The question is any specific steps on how to do it. Will that work?
 
Eug said:
That's a fine CPU in terms of performance - Phenom II X4 965. Much faster than my Athlon II X3 435 actually. Definitely worth the upgrade.

Plus Windows 10 is slightly faster than Windows 7.
Click to expand...

Thanks - I haven't really had any problem with the performance of it 8 years later, wow.
 
I'm still not quite clear how to approach this.

I see options for an 8GB and 32GB flash drive (I don't have USB 3.0, but sluggish seems ok just for a process to get the free license, not to use?).

I see posts saying the '.iso' file is no longer available, and not sure what to do with it if it was.

I see Aomei partition assistant, neverheard of it, don't have it. Etc.
 
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Craig234 said:
All I want to do is preserve the free license - not actually use 10 now.

So, if I have an option to get an 8GB flash drive, and install 10 on it from my Windows 7 system, without affecting the Windows 7 system, that's what I'd like.

The question is any specific steps on how to do it. Will that work?
Click to expand...

Use the media creation tool and perform an upgrade in place then activate it. Once that is done just roll back and your copy of 10 is yours on that hardware.
 
Puffnstuff said:
Use the media creation tool and perform an upgrade in place then activate it. Once that is done just roll back and your copy of 10 is yours on that hardware.
Click to expand...

The option of creating a bootable DVD as the Windows 10 installation media might be the quickest and lowest cost method, if you don't already have a USB thumb drive of the proper size. That's assuming that the target device has an optical drive.
 
So I see a few options. Upgrade in place (seems riskier especially with my low free space), or install on flash or DVD.

I have a writeable DVD and discs - that would be fine. And I just bought a 32GB flash drive which I can use or return.

So which? I hope by looking at the preceding posts it'll help with the process.
 
Wow, I freed up the C: drive space. Now to follow the posts above or just the MS program I found googling that does an update...

Kinda lost, it's saying it wants to use the DVD as a backup of Win 7, not for the Win 10 installation.
 
So I'm using the media tool and 'installing to another computer' on the DVD - and not feeling at all sure this will meet the requirement. Maybe I have to upgrade in place?

Or am I supposed to boot from the DVD it makes and do something?

How do I tell whatever is needed is done if I don't upgrade in place?

Not even quite sure how to boot from the DVD if I need to, can google it.
 
Well this isn't good. The posts said I have to 'activate' it so I'm going through the upgrade process - I have o idea what good the DVD burn did - and it's taking a long time.

There are only 20 minutes left and it's on 88% and not looking good to finish before the deadline, didn't realize it's this slow.
 
Procrastinators make me ROFL. You've had an entire year to upgrade and now complain when you waited until the last moment to get your FREE upgrade to 10.
 
I did six update installs during the week from the iso and the longest one took 40 minutes. I bet you left the box to check for updates online checked.
 
SilentRunning said:
I did six update installs during the week from the iso and the longest one took 40 minutes. I bet you left the box to check for updates online checked.
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No, actually I unchecked that. But this is an 80GB 8 year old SSD that barely squeaked out the 20GB needed in free space.
 
SilentRunning said:
I did six update installs during the week from the iso and the longest one took 40 minutes. I bet you left the box to check for updates online checked.
Click to expand...
How fast was your slowest machine? My Atom 330 always takes a very, very long time to get stuff installed, but it's slow as molasses. It even has SSD, but here it seems CPU speed is important. 40 minutes would have been luxury on this machine, but it took way longer. (For the past couple of days I was having problems updating my old Win 10 install through Windows Update, so instead yesterday I did a Win 10 to Win 10 1511 upgrade using the ISO, and yes I turned off checking for WU for the ISO install.)
 
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