Want to upgrade to Win10 from very old Win7 installation

[Sheep221]

Hey,

I'm thinking about upgrading my main rig to windows 10 as it has proven to be better in many ways. The problem is I have very old Windows 7 installation, it was installed in March 2012 and been in constant daily use since then including countless installations and removals of drivers and various programs etc and having installed some 250 windows updates.

While it works quite well on its own, it does show delayed boot time on SSD and doesn't feel as smooth as it once was so I'm not sure if it is safe to upgrade at this point and mix this can of worms with new OS.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

If you want to take advantage of the free upgrade offer, you'll need to at least upgrade once from your current installation.

I wouldn't worry too much. The 10 "upgrade" is pretty much a new installation of Windows, with migrated settings, on its own.

You can always clean install after you have upgraded, if something doesn't go as expected.

 

[Sheep221]

Oh well, I took the risk and just finished the upgrade everything goes fine. thx

 

[Elixer]

If you want to take advantage of the free upgrade offer, you'll need to at least upgrade once from your current installation.

I wouldn't worry too much. The 10 "upgrade" is pretty much a new installation of Windows, with migrated settings, on its own.

You can always clean install after you have upgraded, if something doesn't go as expected.

That isn't true.
You can clean install windows 10, and THEN use your win 7/8 key.

 

[Sheep221]

That isn't true.
You can clean install windows 10, and THEN use your win 7/8 key.

What you also can do is to have format when upgrading, everything will be formatted, only Key from old installation will be transferred.

 

[nerp]

You can type in a windows 7 or 8.1 key during install to activate windows 10. No need to upgrade first.

If you already upgrade, blast it, install fresh again. It will automatically update. MS has tweaked the authentication process a bit to make it easier. You can use keys from 7 or 8.1 no problem at all.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

That isn't true.
You can clean install windows 10, and THEN use your win 7/8 key.

Oh, that's right. Got added with the November update.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Oh, that's right. Got added with the November update.

Yeah but the upgrade is sometimes easier. For one, you don't need to look for the key, lol.

Personally, I haven't had serious issues on the systems that I have upgraded that way. Some leftovers, yah but nothing big. If anything, it does take a lot of time to get things up and running (the update process itself is rather slow even on ssds). Clean install is what, 10-15 mins?

 

[WilliamM2]

Yeah but the upgrade is sometimes easier. For one, you don't need to look for the key, lol.

Personally, I haven't had serious issues on the systems that I have upgraded that way. Some leftovers, yah but nothing big. If anything, it does take a lot of time to get things up and running (the update process itself is rather slow even on ssds). Clean install is what, 10-15 mins?

Upgrade is about 10 minutes too, if you do it from the usb install media.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Personally, I haven't had serious issues on the systems that I have upgraded that way. Some leftovers, yah but nothing big. If anything, it does take a lot of time to get things up and running (the update process itself is rather slow even on ssds). Clean install is what, 10-15 mins?

I haven't had any issues doing upgrades. Everything has worked pretty well with no major hiccups.

Clean install? About 10 min, from USB drive to SSD. Upgrade from SSD to same SSD is 10-15min. The upgrade process seems to like fast 4K random performance.

(from first boot to Windows desktop)

Upgrade is about 10 minutes too, if you do it from the usb install media.

Actually had to go through the 7-to-10RTM upgrade process on a 5400RPM HDD in an older laptop. Took about an hour.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Insert_Nickname,

Matches my experience. It's a pain to do upgrades on slower disks. Well, I usually clone them to an SSD, do all the "heavy" work, before cloning it back to the spinner. Unless it's a laptop with 100 and 1 screws I am not going to waste time disassembling it in the first place. Heh.

 

[AMDisTheBEST]

Upgrade had been 30-1 hours on my HDD laptop. 10-15 minutes on my SSD desktop. I used range because I had to reinstall winblows 10 dozens of times due to stupid bugs, failed updates, malwares, and driver issues.

 

[us3rnotfound]

Not to threadjack but I finally upgraded from RAID0 HDD WDC Black Enterprise -> Single 850 EVO SSD (SATA2), and the difference couldn't be more stark. After reformatting I executed a series of installs that took just minutes to complete and I had my whole computer back. Not bad.

 

[Sheep221]

Yes I had SSD and it was very quick, the reason I wanted to go with upgrade instead of clean installation was to save time by not installing and configuring dozens of programs I use.

 

[nerp]

That is the convenience of upgrading, for sure. On the bright side, newer, faster machines with SSD means that there is so much less time staring at progress indicators.