Question Upgrade from VIsta to Win10

[MJoshi]

Hello,

Is there an easy way to upgrade from Vista to Windows 10 and still keep the Office suite installed?

 

[daveybrat]

Unfortunately you cannot upgrade from Vista. Windows 7 is the oldest OS that supports an upgrade to 10.

Also, if your PC is still running Vista there's a good chance it won't even run Windows 10.

 

[MJoshi]

Thanks for your reply @daveybrat.

What are the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 10?

 

[Steltek]

Thanks for your reply @daveybrat.

What are the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 10?

Check Windows 10 System Requirements & Specs | Microsoft

Get system requirements, specifications & important details about Windows 10 OS. Also, learn about deprecations, upgrade editions & localization languages.

www.microsoft.com

Of course, installing Windows 10 running on the minimum hardware requirements is going to result in absolutely sucktastic performance. What are the hardware specs of your current system, and what version of Office are you running?

There is also no guarantee your office suite will continue to function on Win10 if it is an old version. However, keys for Microsoft Office tend to be both decently cheap and plentiful (at least, for now, until Office goes web-only with the next version).

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Is there an easy way to upgrade from Vista to Windows 10 and still keep the Office suite installed?

A way, yes. Easy and cheap, no.

But if your hardware is old enough to still run Vista, you may want to think about an upgrade. Especially if you're running the 32bit version, and depending on what hardware you have now of course.

 

[mikeymikec]

I mostly agree with what's been posted so far, though if I were to attempt to run Win10 on a Vista-era PC, I would try a test install of Win10 first onto a separate disk (disconnecting the original first), and try out as much stuff as you'd normally do on the computer as you can.

Another thing to consider is that (genuine) Windows licences aren't cheap. If you were upgrading from 7 or 8.1 then your old licence key would have worked, but I'm pretty sure Vista's won't.

It's a huge jump to make from a 2006 OS to a 2021 OS, and while chances are it will work (assuming that the basic specs are reasonable), a trouble that I had with a high-end Vista-era laptop with an upgrade to Windows 8.1 was that while the new (Intel) graphics driver worked, it did have a tendency for minor graphics corruptions, and the combo wifi/Bluetooth card had issues with Bluetooth. The laptop ran Win7 happily.

The other thing you need to consider is that Windows 10 gets feature updates until 2025 at the latest, and any one of those might not work at all on your computer. Admittedly in my line of work I've only experienced having to downgrade a customer's version of Windows once, but that was a PC that originally ran Windows 8.1, so not much of a jump at all.

Which version of (presumably) Microsoft Office are you running? If you still have the CD and product key for it, it will likely install fine on a new computer, though I would avoid using the old Office install once you've installed on the new computer/Windows install.

 

[Shmee]

What are the specs of this Vista system? If it is something like an X58 board with lots of RAM, it could run Windows 10 no problem with a few upgrades, such as a new SSD. You could even drop in a 6 core Westmere Xeon with a BIOS update, and they are cheap on ebay. This would be a big upgrade for an X58 board running something like an i7 920.

If the system is a laptop or pre core i7, I would probably be looking for a new system to run Windows 10. Either way, make sure you have an SSD for boot drive, and I would recommend a fresh install if you are reusing the system, especially if you are coming from a HDD.

 

[mikeymikec]

What are the specs of this Vista system? If it is something like an X58 board with lots of RAM, it could run Windows 10 no problem with a few upgrades, such as a new SSD. You could even drop in a 6 core Westmere Xeon with a BIOS update, and they are cheap on ebay. This would be a big upgrade for an X58 board running something like an i7 920.

If the system is a laptop or pre core i7, I would probably be looking for a new system to run Windows 10. Either way, make sure you have an SSD for boot drive, and I would recommend a fresh install if you are reusing the system, especially if you are coming from a HDD.

+1 about pre core i7 - my dad's laptop was a decent Vista-era Core 2 Duo laptop that I upgraded with an SSD to Win8.1 a few years ago, but the other day it literally spent three hours consuming the entire CPU with postprocessing .net Windows updates (it had three updates to install in total, and this was after installing and rebooting, just sitting at the Windows desktop). These days it only has one big job to do (Skype/FB video chat) and I normally boot the machine and give it a ten minute head start so Windows isn't still whupping the CPU when I have some real work for it to do.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

+1 about pre core i7 - my dad's laptop was a decent Vista-era Core 2 Duo laptop that I upgraded with an SSD to Win8.1 a few years ago, but the other day it literally spent three hours consuming the entire CPU with postprocessing .net Windows updates (it had three updates to install in total, and this was after installing and rebooting, just sitting at the Windows desktop).

You hit the nail on the head there. The problem with 10 on older hardware isn't so much actually running the OS. In fact I find 10 to run better then 7 on similar hardware. It's the updates that are the main problem. I have the same "issue" on my multi-purpose old OS machine (Athlon x3 445 + 16GB RAM plus PCIe AHCI SSD), it just takes an awfully long time to do updates on it. Fortunately, 10 is mostly needed for "housekeeping", so not booted very often.

Just don't try to run 10 x64 on Brazos. Watching paint dry is quicker and more exiting...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Just don't try to run 10 x64 on Brazos. Watching paint dry is quicker and more exiting...

Indeed! Been there, done that, don't want to re-visit.

(What's fun is upgrading someone's Brazos-based laptop, WITH A HDD (Gah!), from Win7 64-bit to Win10 64-bit, in-place. Took like 6-7 HOURS. Don't want to have to do that again...)

The customer had the nerve to complain that the end-result was "slow". They thought Win10 would have been a magical speed-up of their old (arguably, "junker") of a laptop.

The even more painful thing is, I could have upgraded them to an SSD, at the same time, without any significant labor (just manual installation of said SSD into the laptop's chassis), so I was only going to charge them for the SSD itself, and they said "no", they didn't want to go to the added expense. I mean, yeah, I kind of get it, don't want to throw good money after bad, but by the same token, adding an SSD might have made that laptop "livable" again.

Edit: JayzTwoCents did some videos on PC "decrapifying" scripts, to remove a lot of the background cruft going on in Win10, which really helped a lot on lower-end systems.

 

[mikeymikec]

Brazos with a good SSD is still slow, though perhaps not as bad as the time I saw a i3-6006U running when the fan had died, and the system decided that the processor wasn't going to run any faster than (IIRC) 300MHz.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

While you need to check your hardware my last machines OS path was this:
Vista retail key bought from Compusa going out of business sale
Windows 8 free upgrade
Windows 8.1 patch
Windows 10 free upgrade
Worked fine at every step other than some wonky stuff with my windows I’d/key thingy.