Upgrading to Windows 10 preparation?

I have a Clevo P150EM (Sager NP9150) and I plan to upgrade from Window 8.1 Pro with Media Center within the next month before the free upgrade period expires. Is there anything I need to do or prepare before installing the update through windows update? Such as uninstalling things like my nvidia graphics driver?

I always prefer doing clean installations. After I upgrade through windows update, am I able to do a clean installation from an iso on a usb/dvd? Will it ask me for a key? If so where do I find my key?

 

I did that a while back (and then reverted back to windows 7, didn't like Windows 10), it never asked me for a key.
What you do is make sure your old windows is activated, backup all your data, and then run the upgrade.
Once the upgrade is complete, you run a system reset, there's an option to wipe all user data (it essentially does a clean install) and you're done. I don't think windows 10 asks for license keys, if I remember correctly, our IT guy said that its hardware ID based. If you have a valid copy of old Windows, your machine's unique ID will be sent to Microsoft and it'll automatically activate.

Things may have changed since winter though, someone correct me if im wrong.

Cheers!

EDIT: Double check on the media center thing, I don't remember there being media center in W10

 

now you can clean install Windows 10 using your current Win 7/8 product key and it would activate just fine. No need to waste time on the upgrade

NBR Windows 10 Clean Installation Guide

 

lol, well that makes things easier, still a terrible OS though IMHO.

 

no doubt about that. Why am I using it then?

Because Windows 7 sucks with NVMe drives, 30+ seconds boot time and degraded performance even if you applied the Windows Hotfix for NVMe.

Windows 8.1 I'll never touch because it forces you to login with a Micro$h4ft account if you want to use OneDrive unlike Windows 7 or 10 where you can have a local account and still use OneDrive.

 

Personal preferences I'd say, to each his own. I personally have no need for NVMe drives and I'm okay with a 30 second boot time, although that seems a bit long with an ssd, ~15 seconds with a SATAIII SSD here. (NVMe is also too slow as a scratch drive, there's 192GB of ECC ram in my workstation, 64 of which is a RAM disk scratch drive).

Also, I dislike the UI, the search doesn't work properly half the time, and I find Cortana's to be a little creepy. That and OneDrive is slower than a beached whale (and I have gigabit symmetrical now, thanks work! ), and I don't trust Microsoft with confidential data.

EDIT: To clarify, NVMe is only too slow when you're running ridiculous simulation workloads.

 

to be honest I'm not concerned about benchmarks or anything, all I want is a fast boot time. It hurts me that my wife's cheap Dell Vostro boots in 8 seconds to Windows with a Crucial SATA III SSD and on my Samsung 950 PRO the boot time is 30+ seconds, the Windows splash screen just keeps spinning till no tomorrow.

 

Yeah, I'd be annoyed by that too. Although, to be fair, I don't think m.2 ssds are ready for widespread adoption yet. There are too many compatibility issues still, and they thermal throttle like crazy with high workload. RAM disks can take a 24/7 workload, NVMe SSDs can't.

 

They don't throttle in the chassis of this laptop bro:

 

Yes, upgrade to Win 10, after that you will be able to clean install it with the media creation tool, and you won't need the serial key (which you won't have anyway), since the system will autodetect that you have a license.

Just press "I don't have the key" during the clean install.

 

Yes no media center in windows 10.

 

Yeah, its a real kick in the pants for anyone that has a tuner card and recorded TV shows.

 

I just performed a clean Win10 install on my Desktop last week. Don't bother on wasting time with doing an upgrade first to 'register' with Microsoft servers.

Download the media creation tool and make a bootable USB (4gb mininum). Write down your windows 7 key somewhere, when you boot into the Win10 tool select clean install and when it asks for a product key, enter your existing win 7 key and everything should work.

And right, Win10 has no media center capabilities they gutted that out completely.

 

Straight clean install is a good way to do things IF you know you're gonna keep Windows 10, for some people, its better to upgrade since they have the option to roll back if they don't like it. I tried W10, didn't like it, rolled back to W7.

 

So which key is considered my windows 10 key for an upgrade? The laptop came with windows 7 home. The key rubbed off but I believe I wrote it down in a text file on my flashdrive. I also got a windows 8.1 pro upgrade key from my university (which is what is currently installed) and I know I have that key written to a text file on my flashdrive.

 

If you do it via the upgrade path, you don't need a key, it activates by itself. If you do a clean install, either one should work since both versions are entitled to the upgrade.

 

Clean install plus image backup of your old install would be the best way IMO.

 

So I've never done an image backup before. If I were to do a backup of my SSD (which is about 500GB) do I actually need 500GB drive for the image? Will it need as much space is actually used? Does it compress at all?

 

yes, you can even choose the compression level in Macrium Reflect, the more you compress, the slower the process is.

 

Also the slower the restore. How compressible your data is is also going to impact the final size but it's usually a fair bit lower.