Windows 10 (FREE) for Win 7 & 8 users

I bought a couple of used HP desktops without drives and was worried I might have to purchase Windows licenses. But I installed 10 Pro and found them already fully activated. 10 also just boots up when I've swapped the system drive between different hardware. Though the Pro version doesn't activate on a machine previously activated with Home.

For installing 10 I made a UEFI bootable installer on my fastest SD card. Just a warning. Don't use Sony's in camera format option on such a card. The camera will happily use it, but the card will be unreadable by Windows. I had to PhotoRec the images.

I am still using 7 for work, but they are supposedly upgrading it soon.

Edited by QuietOC - 05 November 2019 at 14:10

Ahoy!

I received an email message from Build 2017 the developer of the Windows 10 Creators Edition OS to advise there will be a new release in the autumn/fall (depending on where on the planet you are) called the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update which you read about here to see what it's all about, so it's just some heads-up should you be interested (or not)

If not already signed-up, it might be a good idea to register for the Windows Insider Programme so you get a notification message advising when it's available either by direct download or using the Windows Update and Security option in the PC Settings of Windows 10.

It was in the Internet Options>General>Tabs>Tabbed Browser Settings and it had changed from Open a New Tab to Open a New Tab in my News Feed. I do have Chrome installed but am used to IE and am aware of Firefox but never felt a need for it. But that might have changed.

Rob, rather then fixing it maybe just switch to Mozilla Firefox

Two big advantages:
- I till brings up the page with links to your most visited sites
- It's properly colour managed

I've been using it for several years now, and for me it's been virtually hassle free (and financially free)

IanL wrote: [QUOTE=petesidewalk] I encountered a similar Win 10 problem with my Graphics Driver, which I use to feed a large TV screen. Previously, I could use the ATI utility to set a custom resolution to get a good fit to the screen. No more - stuck with a very limited set of resolutions, none of which are quite right. However, a Google search led me to the freeby Custom Resolution Utility, which works beautifully. Perhaps there is something similar for your problem.

One thing I do like about Win10 is the ability to set multiple monitors at different settings. On my desktop I use a 28" monitor turned vertically for OS, icons, email, etc and a larger, 42" 4k screen for photos. Prior versions of Windows set the monitors at their defaults and that was that. Now I can customize resolution, font size, icons, etc for each. Pretty nice really.

FWIW, I'm using an AMD Firepro adapter, It was not terribly expensive and does a nice job with 4k and handling both screens. Sometimes it is time to give up older (expensive) beloved hardware that we know intimately when new stuff does what we need and more easily.

Time to the dumpster can be shorter than mean time between failures, and that hurts. But, it is sorta like Nikons, Canons and the A9. It ain't going to be backwards compatible with a mirror. "The latest and greatest" often is. Moore's Law derivatives are still in the IT driver's seat.

petesidewalk wrote: Greetings all, I realize this is a photography based site, not a video based site, so here goes. I owned Sony Vegas 12 in the past and updated to Magix Vegas 14 when I updated my video processing computer to Windows 10. I had no idea that Windows 10 updates were not easily subject to choice when I installed W10. I used AVC MainConcept rendering which would only use Nvidia drivers into the low 340's for my GTX 590. Upon update, bam... no GPU acceleration. Same with my raid drivers for my esata hardware, it cooks hard drives now. I was interested in running an Radeon RX card with an old Fermi series GTX in tandem on my motherboard, but you can only do that on Windows 7....

I encountered a similar Win 10 problem with my Graphics Driver, which I use to feed a large TV screen. Previously, I could use the ATI utility to set a custom resolution to get a good fit to the screen. No more - stuck with a very limited set of resolutions, none of which are quite right.

However, a Google search led me to the freeby Custom Resolution Utility, which works beautifully. Perhaps there is something similar for your problem.

Greetings all,

I realize this is a photography based site, not a video based site, so here goes. I owned Sony Vegas 12 in the past and updated to Magix Vegas 14 when I updated my video processing computer to Windows 10. I had no idea that Windows 10 updates were not easily subject to choice when I installed W10. I used AVC MainConcept rendering which would only use Nvidia drivers into the low 340's for my GTX 590. Upon update, bam... no GPU acceleration. Same with my raid drivers for my esata hardware, it cooks hard drives now. I was interested in running an Radeon RX card with an old Fermi series GTX in tandem on my motherboard, but you can only do that on Windows 7.

I like the added security of Windows 10, but the "one size fits all" driver update policy has been a disaster for me. Come to think of it, I have an ACER i5 tablet and the widows update took out it's g sensor and automatic screen rotation capability. The hardware compatibility tool in the first release really didn't fare well in my opinion. I look forward to downloading this update to see if some of these glitches have been addressed, and I really won't be able to tell if I try (which has been the root of the problem).

Thanks all,

Greg