The procrastinator's guide to free Windows 10 upgrades

AggieMike88

AggieMike88

Touchdown! Greaser!
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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.
This ZDNet.com article might be of interest to some. I am pulling the trigger soon and it did remind me of a few key steps (such as image backup) to take so if it goes tango uniform, the damage is minimized.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-procrastinators-guide-to-free-windows-10-upgrades/

Time is running out.

If you have a PC that's currently running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 10. But that offer ends in a little over a week, on July 29, 2016, which means it's decision time.

If you're certain you don't want the upgrade, you can stop right here. Just say no to the upgrade prompt and the nagging will stop at the end of this month.

If you are reasonably certain you want to upgrade in the next year, you should claim your upgrade now, then roll back to your current operating system. (Details here.)

If you've decided you're ready to make the leap, here's how to do it with the maximum safety and minimum hassle.​
 
So when the free offer ends will it stop promoting me to update. I already updated and rolled back. It still tells me to upgrade to 10 but I don't want to
 
Presumably there is downside to not upgrading.
Will Win7/8 go the way of XP - 'unsupported, security gaps' etc?
 
Supposedly Microsoft will provide security updates for Windows 7 until mid-2020. Until then, I'm fine with 7 Pro.

But I've also become somewhat of a crotchety old man when it comes to my tech geekiness. Get off my lawn, you damned kids!
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Presumably there is downside to not upgrading.
Will Win7/8 go the way of XP - 'unsupported, security gaps' etc?
Click to expand...
From what I have been reading, yes, but you still have time. Most articles state support for Win7 will exist for 3 years... Then it will cease.
 
I have it downloaded but not installed, might try a dual boot setup to check it out
 
Downloaded it, didn't run a bunch of pereipherals, windows explorer popped up every time I started it, no amount of registry finagling fixed it. Went back to 7/8.1

Found an exe file that prevents that stupid Win10 notice from popping up and installed it on all the office and home computers.
 
EdFred said:
Downloaded it, didn't run a bunch of pereipherals, windows explorer popped up every time I started it, no amount of registry finagling fixed it. Went back to 7/8.1

Found an exe file that prevents that stupid Win10 notice from popping up and installed it on all the office and home computers.
Click to expand...
link please
 
IDK what he used but here's a good one https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

I actually did update to 10... not sure what all the hate is about. It's a big improvement over 8/8.1 in every way... and it seems to perform better than 7. If you don't have compatibility issues I'd give it a shot, it's really not bad.
 
Went looking for why there was no Win 9. Got a good answer, but the best one was, "Because 7 8 9"
 
Because a lot of windows programming used win9* as a search for windows 95 and windows 98. So they skipped win9 to avoid compatibility issues.

The link cowman put up is the one I used.
 
Other answer was that they wanted it to appear as a "bigger badder" upgrade than just an incremental.
 
kayoh190 said:
Supposedly Microsoft will provide security updates for Windows 7 until mid-2020. Until then, I'm fine with 7 Pro.

But I've also become somewhat of a crotchety old man when it comes to my tech geekiness. Get off my lawn, you damned kids!
Click to expand...

If I'm still around in 2020 and they stop supporting Win 7 Pro I'll think about changing. Till then........
 
cowman said:
IDK what he used but here's a good one https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

I actually did update to 10... not sure what all the hate is about. It's a big improvement over 8/8.1 in every way... and it seems to perform better than 7. If you don't have compatibility issues I'd give it a shot, it's really not bad.
Click to expand...
I forget what I didn't like about but it was enough to make me revert. I'm sure appearance had a lot to do with it. The new office makes me wish I was blind.
 
I like "10" on my laptop with touchscreen but I am keeping "7" on the desktop. However, I was smart, at least I think I was, and upgraded my desktop with an older hard drive with the same windows key version of "7" on it and kept my SSD "7." The hard drive was already in there hanging out so all I had to do was a quick cable swap.So that should take care of things for later.

As a side note, once you get used to an SSD, it is very painful to go back to a mechanical hard drive. The upgrade took quite a while not to mention just booting into windows 7.

David
 
Norman said:
If I'm still around in 2020 and they stop supporting Win 7 Pro I'll think about changing. Till then........
Click to expand...

I'm not a big fan of upgrading software unless I have a compelling reason to do it. I really don't like bloat. I'd think about installing 10 if I had a touchscreen device, but other than that, I just don't see any features that are worth making the switch.
 
flhrci said:
I like "10" on my laptop with touchscreen but I am keeping "7" on the desktop. However, I was smart, at least I think I was, and upgraded my desktop with an older hard drive with the same windows key version of "7" on it and kept my SSD "7." The hard drive was already in there hanging out so all I had to do was a quick cable swap.So that should take care of things for later.

As a side note, once you get used to an SSD, it is very painful to go back to a mechanical hard drive. The upgrade took quite a while not to mention just booting into windows 7.

David
Click to expand...

Amen to that. I have a storage drive in my desktop. After I installed the SSD as the primary the storage drive seems like a pokey puppy.
 
If your PC is popping up the "Upgrade to WinX" dialog, you have the WinX adware. Easy to uninstall.
I got rid of it as soon as Microsoft snuck it onto my OS. One big clue is if there's a GWX process running.
Google it and remove it and you will live happily for a few more years, without annoying popups every few minutes.
 
There are a lot of improvements the Windows OS in Win 10. Not the least of which is to include whole disk encryption at the 'Pro' level. Lots of other security enhancements to the OS also, and a bunch of new APIs for future cool stuff.

If you never plan to upgrade to win10 use this free utility:

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm
 
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JimNtexas said:
If you never plan to upgrade to win10 use this free utility:

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm
Click to expand...
I had totally forgotten about Steve Gibson's existence. I remember him from WAAAAY back. Always appreciated the work he did and the way he did it. And wish more developers would write code like he does. Extremely functional and compact. No need for terabytes of .dll's and other bloat.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
So when the free offer ends will it stop promoting me to update. I already updated and rolled back. It still tells me to upgrade to 10 but I don't want to
Click to expand...
Do a little googling on how to stop Win10 messages for detailed instructions. Basically, you want to uninstall and hide the update for KB3035583. That's the Win10 Nagware. Hiding the update may not be permanent. It's un-hidden itself on my system at least once and tried to get reinstalled.
 
JimNtexas said:
There are a lot of improvements the Windows OS in Win 10.
Click to expand...
I was dumped into the lake and asked to swim when my new work laptop came with WinX. It was a nice experiment in usability.
There are only a few new features that I like. The rest of the redesign negates the user experience (just like all the previous releases) and I have to re-learn how to do things or am now forced to use the mouse for something that was doable from the keyboard before. *sigh*
I will be staying with Win7 as long as I can, I am afraid.
 
Anyone using the add on utility "RainMeter" to modify the UI? This works for Win7 as well as 8 and 10
 
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