Getting Ready for Windows 10 on some older systems.

Many folks are looking at the press reports coming out about Windows 10 and considering updating their existing Windows 7 or 8 machines to Windows 10.

But as much as MS touts a free and clean update process - with any OS upgrade there is risk. In fact in the early weeks of Windows 10 release - it was reported that some 50% of upgrades failed for one reason or another.   

So here are a few best practices and lessons learned over the past year being a part of the Windows 10 Insider Fast Ring group to help mitigate those risks..

First - review the current state of your OS and make sure you can upgrade to Windows 10.  From an OS level you must be at a minimum of Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 Update.   Check your system properties to make sure you are there.  If not you will need to run Windows Update and get there.  

Next review the current state of your hardware.   Here are the MS minimums...
  • Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster.
  • RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
  • Free hard disk space: 16 GB.
  • Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver.
  • A Microsoft account and Internet access.

Here is where you need to make a decision - should I upgrade components of my PC or purchase a new one.   And this will depend very much on your use case.  This is especially true with your graphics card.   Do some due diligence with your PC vendor or device manufacturer to see if your graphics card is actually supported under Windows 10.   If your machine is more than 3 or 4 years old - most likely it will not be.   I had to upgrade mine.  Luckily it was only a $69 upgrade to jump 3 generations newer.

If you just do a lot of browsing and use some Office apps - then chances are your current processor and RAM may be sufficient.  A good way to test this is to start your machine and before launching any apps - Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and select Task Manager - then click on the performance tab to look at your CPU and Memory utilization.  

For example when I do that with one of desktops is shows 0 - 2% CPU utilization and 1.8GB of Memory in use running Windows 10 Pro 64bit.  So while MS's 2GB minimum will allow you to run the OS if may not be enough to run multiple apps.  Launching Chrome and Word 2016 put me at 2GB.  So right at the limit - open a large document and all of a sudden the OS will need to begin swapping memory pages to disk.   My minimum recommendation for Windows 10 is 4GB of RAM with 8GB preferred.  The good news is most DDR3 RAM out there is pretty cheap - you can typically get 4Gb DDR3 DIMMS for around $25 each.

Next look at your hard drive.  The 16GB free space is a minimum - think more like 32GB or more.  The Windows 10 upgrade will make a copy of your old Windows version in a Windows.old directory - and while you can remove it later it will need the space during the upgrade.   So use the Disk Clean-up utility in Windows to remove unwanted temp files, windows update files, etc.   Also remove any older programs that you really don't use anymore.  You may want to run a defrag as well.

I seriously recommend moving to a Solid State Drive (SSD) to house your OS and Apps.  It is probably the single most substantial improvement that can add years to your PC.  Most of the performance impact on your PC isn't from CPU or RAM but rather from really slow Disk IO.  But remember - all new SSDs use the Serial AT Attachment or SATA standard.  Even if your PC only has a SATA I or II interface - you will see dramatic performance improvements.   The good news here is that SSDs are dropping in price.  Many 256Gb SSD are well under $150 and some 512GB versions are around $250.  

If you have an older IDE or PATA Drive - I would seriously look at a new PC. Any gains from Windwos 10 will be lost on the old hardware.

Additionally - look at your Disk Controller settings in BIOS - especially if you have RAID set. Unless you actually have multiple drivers already in some sort of RAID setting - you're better off going to straight AHCI setting - but there can be an impact to the signature on your existing drive - also you may need to download boot drivers like Intel's Rapid Storage to get everything to work.

My general recommendation is to separate OS and Apps from Data on individual drives.  This provides you great flexibility to change OS with out impacting your data.   Chances are your PC will support 2 hard drives - so you can add an SSD for Windows 10 and your apps and then use your old drive for you data.   More on the approach later.

One thing that MS doesn't mention and that is networking.  99 times out of 100 your hard wired ethernet interface will work.  The challenge can be with wireless.  So as with your graphics card - check the PC vendors or component manufacturers support site to see if Windows 10 is supported.   Now in many cases a Windows 8.1 driver will also work - but you may go through some trial and error with installation.   Download the drivers and put them on a USB or CD drive so you can install.

Then there are all the vendor specific features - like specialized keyboards, TPM, Bluetooth, Fingerprint and card readers, screen lights, etc.  If you using PC vendor specific applications to run those functions - please do some due diligence and see if the vendor is supporting Windows 10.   In many cases MS has a lot of generic drivers that will light up the hardware - but you may not get the full functionality you had.  This is especially true for Windows 7 users.  Back then a lot of PC vendors provided specific software to run these kinds of chipsets and periperals.  Not as much today.

Finally there are those new Windows 10 features like Windows Hello facial recognition that will only work with the latest devices.  So don't expect your old built-in web cam on your laptop or monitor to support it.   And while your at it you may want to download the Windows 10 drivers for your printers, scanners, all-on-ones.

Okay - so now you've done your due diligence and both your OS and hardware can support Windows 10 - you've downloaded all of your drivers, etc - so what's next...

First determine your existing Windows Key. There are several tools out there - one of the more popular is called Keyfinder from Magical Jelly Bean. it will provide you the License Key for your current Windows installation - write it down.   Next download a fully legitimate copy of Windows 7, 8 or 10 from MS https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/home.  You will need the key you got from the previous step to download.

Even if you created "Recovery Disks" from your PC vendor - I would still consider doing the two steps above.

Often the recovery disk models really don't work very well and if for some reason you do need to go back to Windows 7 or 8 you at least have good media to work from.  

Same for your apps - collect all of the app disks, etc you have along with their license information and have it a readily available place in case you need it.  MS provides the same capability for Office - so make sure you have media just in case..

Next and the most obvious step - Backup your data, Backup up your data and then Backup your data.  I don't care which method you use - a USB connected hard drive - cloud service, DVDs whatever - but backup your data. 

Yes if you have hundreds or thousands of music files or pictures or whatever it can be a pain to do the backup - but never assume that some thing like an OS upgrade can not harm them.  

While some folks don't like this step - I say create a Microsoft Account if you don't already have one.   it will allow apps like OneDrive to work and will generally make your life a little easier when maintaining the machine going forward.

The final prep step that I recommend is turn off and remove your 3rd party anti-virus software.  You will probably have to update it anyway - so get it out of the way before you upgrade.   Also if you are upgrading a laptop - I recommend doing it stand-alone and NOT in a docking station.   You can attached to dock afterwards..

After you have completed the above - now you can consider upgrading to Windows 10.   So remember this is an upgrade of your existing OS instance to Windows 10.  It is NOT a dual boot or a fresh install.  You must upgrade to Windows 10 on your existing system first to get a record on MS's servers for your PC - then you can do things like change to an SSD or do a "clean install" on your existing drive.

that will allow you to upgrade your machine or to download and ISO or create USB or DVD media.  

Windows 10 upgrade is a four step process from there.   

  1. Download - figure 3.6 - 4.2GB for Windows 10
  2. Windows Installation - expands the download files, copies your old Windows to Windows.old and collects existing settings, then preps your machine for Windows 10 install and reboots
  3. Driver Install - Windows will install what drivers it can for your machine and then reboot
  4. Configuration - will perform base settings configuration.  
After step 4 windows will show some greeting screens - ask you to connect to a network - like wireless and finally say "let's start" where you will be greeted with a login screen.  I would login in with my MS account and you should be good to go.   

MS will place on the home screen a file that will show you things it did not or could not upgrade.   Be prepared the list could be extensive - that is why I recommend doing these downloads and have media ready before hand..

Also I recommend immediately going to Device Manager and seeing if MS lit up all of your devices - if not - here is where your earlier downloaded files come in.

Another recommendation is to open the Store app and click on your ID and select downloads - then click on Check for Updates - MS has separated apps from the Core OS and they may need to upgrade.  

So some final thoughts - if your PC, laptop, tablet is 2 years old or less - chances are it will run Windows 10 fine.  

If you have a 3 to 6 year old machine - you may want consider upgrading to an SSD and New Graphics card.   it will cost less than a new PC in most cases and give you several more years of use out your machine.  Yes you may have proprietary apps to upgrade - but it should run okay.

If your machine is > 7 years old - chances are you are going to run into hard roadblocks for component or peripheral support and you should probably consider a new one.   It will probably cost you less then you paid for your current one 7 years ago and will be light years ahead on capability.

Bottom Line - do your due diligence on hardware and software - backup, backup, backup and prepare to go back if you have to.   


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Solar Storage - 2023 Update

  A few years back I published a 2 Part post discussing Solar Energy systems.  The discussion focused on all the due diligence and prep work needed and what were some of the key considerations around designing and implementing a solar system. One of the discussion points was around solar storage or batteries.  What were the use cases for batteries and if they were a good investment and should you incorporate them into your design. Back in 2020 - the math around batteries said no - that you wouldn't be able to break even on the cost of a storage system over its normal warranty life of 10 years. So here we are three years later and so I figured it was time to revisit.   There are two primary uses cases for solar storage.    First is what's called peak offset or peak shifting.  This is a concept where you utilize stored solar generation to run your home during what many utilities call Peak Periods that are part of a general category of rate plans known as Time of Day (TOD) plans.
Read more

ASUS RT-AC68U Router & WDS - a nice solution for a large home.

I recently had a newer Asus RT-AC87U Router die.  The wireless chipset never seemed to work well and first the 5Ghz bands started to fail and then the 2.4Ghz failed leaving my 25 wireless device household high and dry. So after some due diligence I decided to replace with 2 of the older RT-AC68U and implement a Wireless Distribution System (WDS) configuration. In the past - I've mentioned an open source router OS called DD-WRT.  The Asus routers come pre-installed with their version of DD-WRT.  Asus does utilize their own UI overtop DD-wrt and overall I do not like nearly as much as the traditional UI - but core dd-wrt capabilities are there.   Additionally you can flash the RT-AC68 with native DD-WRT if your so inclined. In my previous configuration I was also using an older Linksys 4200 running dd-wrt configured in Client Bridge mode that allowed clients to connect to the Linksys as well as use some of the bands to connect back to the RT-AC87U. While it worked - I felt that
Read more

Home Automation Platforms + Matter - Early Observations

For those of us who have been involved in automating homes by adding "smart" devices from light switches to thermostats, cameras, sensors, controllers, etc - there was always a challenge with managing the wide range of devices. While each OEM had their own app that would allow you to control their devices - you'd often end up with anywhere from 4 - 10 apps that were required to manage the entire home.  And depending on your product choices you also had to have hubs to communicate from your Wifi network to other RF networks like Zigbee or Z-Wave.  With many of these "hubs" they had native support across multiple vendors or you had to add plugins or provide specific OEM support. Some OEM apps were great, some sucked, but it became challenging to provide a solution for a client where they could easily manage their home on their own.  Between having to maintain multiple credentials/logins across the apps and even communicating which app controls what - it sometimes
Read more