Win7PRO to Win10PRO Upgrade
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@BRRABill said:
Another question/thought is that I am going to be upgrading to a 2012 domain shortly. Should I do the Win10 upgrade AFTER that for group policy reasons?
You can update the GP central store. domain level doesn't affect GP.
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I'm in the same situation, 17 Dell Desktops with W7
I upgraded one machine using Windows Update, no error in all the process, looking the license appear as correctly activated.
Now I'm going to create a image to clone the computers, using this tutorial you can activate W10 licence before install it
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
@MattSpeller said:
@BRRABill EHEhehehehehe
You are most certainly not. I run Win10 at home for my own personal punishment. We trialed win8.1 on some tablet-y things but got terrible feedback on the OS and the hardware.
2020 is a lonnnngggg way away.
And Windows 7 is ancient.
Yes, remember that Windows 7 is seven years old. Seven years, for a computer OS! It's amazing to think that people still consider this a reasonable system to keep running (outside of those special circumstances.) Three major updates with names and one or two without since Win 7 came out. It was a good release, sure, but seven years!?!?
That's nearly a decade. 70% of one, anyway.
What makes Windows 10 that much better?
What makes any software better over time? Seven years is huge, especially when you consider this is the core product of the world's largest software company and nothing but refinements and updates to the same version - so no rewrites. That's seven years of a massive team implementing new technology, new techniques - not only to the core codebase but also to the compiler that compiles it. Seven years of new technologies to support such as the latest Skylake CPU features, as an example. Seven years of bug fixes, refactoring, cleaning up, new knowledge applied, new features, new thought processes, etc.
Seven years more mature code base. That's epic. Windows 7 came out in 2009 as the first point release update to Vista. Vista released in 2007. The Vista family has NINE years of maturity into it, but you are giving up seven of those nine years of maturity when you choose Windows 7 giving you only two years of maturity instead of the nine that Windows 10 has. That's nearly all of the time that Windows has been being improved that you just don't have.
And all of that is just about the code. It doesn't take into account things like compatibility, long term support, ease of future migrations, leveraging current value, etc.
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@BRRABill said:
What makes Windows 10 that much better?
The three biggest places where you see seven years of work are security, performance and features.
Windows 10 is faster than 8.1 which was faster than 8 which was faster than 7 (which in turn was faster than Vista.) That's a big deal. Your existing hardware goes farther with 10.
Security is quite big. If you are security conscious at all, using old (read: immature, untested) code bases make no sense. Security requires maturing.
Features. This one is more obvious. For seven years MS has been adding stuff to Windows. Staying on old systems you just give that up.
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I'm still pretty mixed on this.
Fundamentally I know there can be very few reasons to not depend on the chance that the developers are competent and doing right by you over time.
I've also seen where @scottalanmiller describes a totally unstable experience. At the same time I know several other Mangoes haven't had any of the same issues. My own experience is really limited but had a pretty fair amount of glitchy type stuff, empty dialog boxes and empty error messages to work through. 7 years of advances shouldn't mean anything close to having to work back through the basics of an OS or waiting and hoping for those basics to catch back up.
The 7 years old point is accurate for sure and worthwhile in more ways than one, but a little disingenuous in another respect too while 7's still being updated.
Finally I haven't seen a ton of talk here recently about either the question of MS's true regard for user privacy and security over time, or the turn towards explaining even less about what's in each update.
As a sysadmin keeping your users patched and updated is doing your job, following best practices and covering your ass. Maybe I could have been good at being paranoid if the last 15 years hadn't snuck up so fast, but it's way too late for that now too.
I don't want to take this toward a security discussion or try to advocate moving everyone to Mint before 2020 or something.
The standard best practices sysadmin approach just has these couple inconsistencies to me in this case. I know there are a ton of limits to my knowledge that would probably explain some of this.
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@ryanblahnik I'll definitely give you the glitchy stuff is annoying, but more often than not, in my experience (and I'm pretty sure in Scott's too) those problems were primarily limited to users using an upgrade to 10. While it would be great to think that MS has solved their upgrade woes, considering all of the third party software out there, there are just to many unknowns in my opinion to expect that to work well (yet the 100+ million that moved and stayed on Windows 10 initially probably did just that - upgraded and nothing more).
I have found that after doing an upgrade to get your license, doing a complete OS reset (or wipe and reinstall) generally solves any issues at the OS level. Of course this is a huge pain in the ass, you have to backup your data (wait - you didn't do that already before upgrade?), reinstalling your apps (this means in some cases you have to uninstall them correctly to deregister an app so you can reinstall it - most of the time you have no clue which apps require this until you've already been bit by it) etc, etc.
You mentioned privacy. How is MS any different than any of a dozen plus other tech companies doing the exact same thing - I'll tell you how - THEY ARE TELLING YOU THEY ARE DOING IT.
Most if not everyone today is collecting mostly anonymous usage data on their users, I believe, to help them improve their products. MS is just finally joining the bandwagon.
Samnsung TV's now have a built in microphone and is streaming everything it hears off to a third party (yeah, not Samnsung, but to a unknown partner of Samnsung's).
We've had discussions around ML about who do you trust with your data? In general the consensus was that we trusted larger mega companies because they have more to lose if that data gets loose. Unlike the government - they have nothing to lose.
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@iroal said:
I'm in the same situation, 17 Dell Desktops with W7
I upgraded one machine using Windows Update, no error in all the process, looking the license appear as correctly activated.
Now I'm going to create a image to clone the computers, using this tutorial you can activate W10 licence before install it
Interesting. If this works, this will be the first way to use cloning/imaging that appears (without reading the EULA) to be legal to deploy images without using VL media.
I'm wondering, does running gatherosstate.exe do the process that actually registers your machine with MS? Or is that not handled until the associated GenuineTicket.xml file is run under the Windows 10 install?
I have to assume the latter, otherwise why bother doing the latter?
I would be interested to know - if after doing this and verifying that it's activated, if you wipe the machine again, and install Win10 from scratch again, will it auto activate without the need to save this file?
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@ryanblahnik said:
The 7 years old point is accurate for sure and worthwhile in more ways than one, but a little disingenuous in another respect too while 7's still being updated.
Windows 7 still is supported with patches, it is not getting updated. Not the same thing. Only necessary fixes are still applied. The code base continuous to age in general.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@ryanblahnik said:
The 7 years old point is accurate for sure and worthwhile in more ways than one, but a little disingenuous in another respect too while 7's still being updated.
Windows 7 still is supported with patches, it is not getting updated. Not the same thing. Only necessary fixes are still applied. The code base continuous to age in general.
it's in extended support now, so sure, but for the first 5 years it was "" more than just updates/patches.
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@ryanblahnik said:
The standard best practices sysadmin approach just has these couple inconsistencies to me in this case. I know there are a ton of limits to my knowledge that would probably explain some of this.
I don't see any inconsistencies. Staying updated is important and a best practice but nothing in a panacea.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@ryanblahnik said:
The 7 years old point is accurate for sure and worthwhile in more ways than one, but a little disingenuous in another respect too while 7's still being updated.
Windows 7 still is supported with patches, it is not getting updated. Not the same thing. Only necessary fixes are still applied. The code base continuous to age in general.
it's in extended support now, so sure, but for the first 5 years it was "" more than just updates/patches.
Not in a general sense. What important updates to security structure, functionality, refactoring, kernel performance, etc. were added?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@ryanblahnik said:
The 7 years old point is accurate for sure and worthwhile in more ways than one, but a little disingenuous in another respect too while 7's still being updated.
Windows 7 still is supported with patches, it is not getting updated. Not the same thing. Only necessary fixes are still applied. The code base continuous to age in general.
it's in extended support now, so sure, but for the first 5 years it was "" more than just updates/patches.
Not in a general sense. What important updates to security structure, functionality, refactoring, kernel performance, etc. were added?
I'm pretty sure there were some changes/updates with SP1, but beyond that, not sure any did really happen... but that is why I said "" to mean that MS claims they can/do release these types of updates, but often doesn't and leaves them for the new versions.
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@Dashrender These are more good points. I'll continue to play devil's advocate a little here but I know splitting from best practices on this wouldn't be a sustainable thing either.
A lot of people are barely coming to accept that regular updates are best for them, and would rather continue to work around the annoying notifications because the risk of something changing in a bad way seems higher than the chance of anything improving + considering unknown security-type stuff. When something like last summer's iOS update opens the possibility they can end up with a fairly disabled phone until another fix comes out, it's hard to say they're not justified.
I did the upgrade on an older laptop out of curiosity, and after moving files off didn't ask the upgrade to try to keep any data or any other programs along. The Windows store is where I saw most of my issues. Out of curiosity I think at some point I'll give it another fresh shot from scratch.
Whether most people would have any interest in putting that much time into it or giving it those chances is irrelevant though, because it's our job to handle all that and present them with usable systems.
I really don't mean to take this down a paranoid/security/move to a cave track and you make good points there too. Before I continue more months of studying I always feel like I'm mostly talking out of my ass about security anyway, or at least missing complexities. So I'll try not to hit too much more on this part here.
They are admitting/telling some things, but some updates are more opaque too.
The Samsung example is obscene for sure. If our focus is on trusting and staying patched, the baseline for that stuff can continue to shift even a lot further. Bigger companies have more to lose and that's a fair point too, and they also have a lot of people dependent on their products who might not like the idea of some of this stuff but only have inconvenient alternatives.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I don't see any inconsistencies. Staying updated is important and a best practice but nothing in a panacea.
I'd describe the first one as, they're hounding people, talking about improvements. Follow the process they offer you, and end up running into these issues.
Now even throw that out, because it's our job to keep learning and find independently of MS that we can use a workaround that's more of a hassle than we were promised. But how do you like this so far? If you consider if it weren't MS who you've been working with for decades, would you see it any differently? (Also curious for reference, did a fresh reinstall after your upgrade resolve the issues you've been having?)
The second one follows, and is there a strong base here to have faith in what we're being offered?
I'm thinking of the other thread discussing people following vendor advice. Here, we can't even really "trust, but verify".
If there aren't a lot of good alternatives to trusting, that still doesn't seem to make trusting so black and white.
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I hear ya on updates can sometimes break things situation, so we have to ask ourselves. Do we want to leave ourselves vulnerable to hackers and just skip the updates? It's a double edged sword.
Speaking of what we're told are in the updates, the masses don't care. I suppose we as IT personal do/should, but then again who has time to? In the SMB I don't have the resources that large companies do to test everything before rolling it out (patch wise). I'd definitely spend a significant amount of additional time testing patches then I do fixing a problem when a patch breaks something. I weigh the likeliness of a problem with a patch versus my users becoming infected by a virus and find it's much more likely they will be infected, so I want to patch security holes ASAP.
I also agree that people don't want to be bothered with update notices all the time. My boss was recently lamenting to me about how she just updated last week, when in fact it was approx 4 weeks ago, during the last patch Tuesday event. Windows 8 (or was it 8.1?) for non corporate users just installs the updates and if you don't reboot on your own in three days, reboots for you. I really like this method for those users.
You mentioned your store experience - what was the issue. And - I don't use the store, at least not with any regularity yet. They don't have x86 x64 apps yet, and I'm not an APP buyer anyway.. so...
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@Dashrender said:
You mentioned your store experience - what was the issue.
I've got to run for now but can hit on this quick.
Fox Sports has an app that works well on Android for streaming. They offer it on Windows too, through a browser on 7. I was trying to run it to a TV with HDMI, but after logging in, it worked until the point where you start the stream, and then sat there indefinitely. Tried in 3 different browsers ranging from add-ons to completely stock. So I broke out the old computer, and in 10 you can't do it through a browser and need to install an app.
That 10 minutes was pretty goofy. One or two big half-screen dialog boxes with no text and an OK button, just from opening and starting to navigate.
I'm trying to think exactly what the weirdest part was regarding. After I made it to the app page, it had a couple preinstall checkboxes, maybe they were for automatic updates, or location services. And I remember if I picked one option, the page would just refuse to load, and show me an empty apparent error. After trying the other option, it loaded normally now that it had forced me to that opposite option.
Then there was one more similar round of that, where the option I chose just loaded to a blank page, until trying the option I didn't want let it start to work like it was supposed to. I couldn't have made it up. It would have been a stretch for the normal range of Android glitches and seemed senseless on a desktop.
A lot of this is just the app developers, and when I opened the app it failed at the same point it had on Windows 7. But the store was weird before I made it that far too.
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In 10 you can't do it through a browser? Why not? If you installed Chrome or FF on Windows 10, it wouldn't run? WTF? Are you saying the website knew it was Windows 10 and refused to run outside of their what appears to be a crappy app?
You should be able to solve that by changing the browser string in Chrome or FF (though if the site is doing IP stack scanning to check Windows version, you'll need an IP stack proxy program (that I only just learned about last week - thanks Steve Gibson) that will obfuscate your IP stack.
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@Dashrender said:
In 10 you can't do it through a browser? Why not? If you installed Chrome or FF on Windows 10, it wouldn't run? WTF? Are you saying the website knew it was Windows 10 and refused to run outside of their what appears to be a crappy app?
You should be able to solve that by changing the browser string in Chrome or FF (though if the site is doing IP stack scanning to check Windows version, you'll need an IP stack proxy program (that I only just learned about last week - thanks Steve Gibson) that will obfuscate your IP stack.
Because he only tried Edge obviously. Edge has no plugin infrastructure yet. This is a huge failing on MS' part.
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@Dashrender said:
@iroal said:
I'm in the same situation, 17 Dell Desktops with W7
I upgraded one machine using Windows Update, no error in all the process, looking the license appear as correctly activated.
Now I'm going to create a image to clone the computers, using this tutorial you can activate W10 licence before install it
Interesting. If this works, this will be the first way to use cloning/imaging that appears (without reading the EULA) to be legal to deploy images without using VL media.
I'm wondering, does running gatherosstate.exe do the process that actually registers your machine with MS? Or is that not handled until the associated GenuineTicket.xml file is run under the Windows 10 install?
I have to assume the latter, otherwise why bother doing the latter?
I would be interested to know - if after doing this and verifying that it's activated, if you wipe the machine again, and install Win10 from scratch again, will it auto activate without the need to save this file?
I will be testing this out. And regarding your last question, yes. Because a clean install of Windows 10 does not have this file.
https://i.imgur.com/NfMtcST.jpg -
@JaredBusch said:
@Dashrender said:
@iroal said:
I'm in the same situation, 17 Dell Desktops with W7
I upgraded one machine using Windows Update, no error in all the process, looking the license appear as correctly activated.
Now I'm going to create a image to clone the computers, using this tutorial you can activate W10 licence before install it
Interesting. If this works, this will be the first way to use cloning/imaging that appears (without reading the EULA) to be legal to deploy images without using VL media.
I'm wondering, does running gatherosstate.exe do the process that actually registers your machine with MS? Or is that not handled until the associated GenuineTicket.xml file is run under the Windows 10 install?
I have to assume the latter, otherwise why bother doing the latter?
I would be interested to know - if after doing this and verifying that it's activated, if you wipe the machine again, and install Win10 from scratch again, will it auto activate without the need to save this file?
I will be testing this out. And regarding your last question, yes. Because a clean install of Windows 10 does not have this file.
https://i.imgur.com/NfMtcST.jpgLOL of course a clean install doesn't have that file.
I'm just trying to work out the process and timing when MS puts information about your hardware on their servers to authenticate you?
It would be awesome if it happened when gatherosstate.exe runs. If that was the long and the short of it, and we didn't need that XML file, life would be awesome, we run that, it registers the Windows 7/8/8.1 machine with MS and bam Bob's your uncle. Now you upgrade to Windows 10 whenever you want, be that today, or 2 years from now.
