A chimpanzee and two trainees could run her!
A little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to upgrade a whole slew of Win 10 machines.
Back then, I wrote this article: Reactivating Windows 10 after a second major hardware upgrade
Now, I thought I had everything figured out in terms of re-activing Win 10 after a hardware upgrade.
However, it seems things have changed in even more ways than I thought.
SIGH (again)…
I recently ran into a little problem: I upgraded a puter that had Windows 10 on it, and Win 10 refused to reactivate afterwards!
Now, you might have read my guide here: Upgrade your motherboard without reinstalling Windows 10
Well, it works.
But… It appears there is a limit to the number of times you can upgrade the hardware in your puter before M$ will insist on a call to their beloved Tech Support line.
SIGH…
It’s been several months since Windows 10 1709 was released. Even now, not all puters out there have received the update. As with all versions of Win 10, Microsoft rolls them out slowly over time.
Sometimes, you might not get the latest version because of some incompatibility or other issue. Other times, maybe your internet sucks and it just takes a long time to download 3GB in the background!
In any case, you’ll get the update soon enough – but that doesn’t mean it will work.
The following is my collection of fixes that usually work to convince a puter to successfully install the latest flavor of Windows 10…
You’ve upgraded to Windows 10. All is well.
But then one day, you decide to upgrade your motherboard, processor, and RAM…
With Windows 7, you didn’t have anything to worry about. Most likely, Windows would reactivate after your upgrade, and if it didn’t, an automated phone call to Microsoft was all it took to get back up and running.
But then came Windows 10: You now have a digital entitlement, which then changed to a digital license, which means… ??? Furthermore, until recently your ONLY option was to reinstall everything.
So how the heck do you reactivate Windows 10 after a major hardware upgrade?
Ooooh, man…
Well, it’s finally happened: Microsoft is basically tricking users into installing Windows 10.
That’s right. You now have to be VERY careful if you don’t want Win 10 to automagically download and install.
By now, we’re all used to M$ making decisions for us, but this one is just a bit over the top.
For the time being, there are still ways around it – but I’m not holding my breath…
For those of you who have been avoiding the free upgrade to Windows 10, there is one very good reason why you might want to rethink your plans.
The most obvious reason is that apparently, Windows 10 will no longer be a free upgrade after July of this year. And one way or another, eventually you will get a new puter, and the only supported OS will be Windows 10, anyway…
But if that doesn’t convince you, how about this: Windows 10 let’s you scroll inactive windows just by hovering the mouse pointer over the window.
What on Earth am I talking about?
If you used Internet Explorer in Windows 7 or 8, all your bookmarks were saved in your Favorites folder.
After the upgrade to Windows 10, you may discover that in the new version of IE, called Microsoft Edge, your favorites are missing!
You’d think the import of your bookmarks/favorites would happen automatically during the Windows 10 upgrade, but alas…
Not to worry though, because it’s a piece of cake to restore all of your missing Favorites!
In just 10 days, Microsoft will officially unveil their latest OS, Windows 10.
Windows 10 comes after the much-hated Windows 8, so many people are wondering if it’s actually worth the upgrade.
I can’t tell you if the upgrade is right for you, because I’m not sure I even have the final build as a “Windows Insider” (I have been testing Win 10 builds on my laptop as they are released for some time now).
I can tell you some simple facts that will help you make up your mind, and hopefully cut through some of the rather ridiculous hype that has popped up in recent days related to the new OS.
If you haven’t seen Part 1, it’s here:
SSD: Why you need to upgrade your computer with a Solid State Hard Drive
With Part 1 out of the way, you’ve decided to take the plunge. Great!
How do you actually do the upgrade? Well, that can get a bit complicated.
There are a few things you’ll need to know before you even think of a DIY upgrade.
After covering those, I’ll discuss a few options for the different upgrade cases you might encounter.
Everyone is always looking to make their computer faster, whether they realize it or not. Usually, it’s only after an upgrade that we realize just how pokey our machine was running beforehand.
These days, there isn’t a huge difference between a 2-year-old computer and a brand new one. Oh, sure, newer puters will always be faster… But unless you’re doing something hardcore like video editing or gaming, you probably won’t notice much of a difference.
There is one upgrade, though, that makes a huge difference pretty much across the board: the addition of an SSD.
At this point, you probably have 2 questions: