I have 3 w7 PC at home I am happy with them as is, I even have a USB w7 install key with added usb 3.0, nvme etc drivers for ryzen 3600/b450 board made with some tools from the really helpful peeps in the w7 forum boards that works quite good. That said while 2 of the Pc will stay on w7 for now I am replacing my ageing i5-750 PC soonish with a ryzen 5800x/x570 board and plan on making this my main PC and with VR also in mind so I need windows 10 installed on this one. Hopefully now lots of the w10 issues have been sorted and work around found! What I need is advice on how to: get windows 10 Pro from my existing w7 Home install that uses the daz loader to make it genuine? is it possible to do a clean w10 install and then make it genuine in some manner like using the daz loader or do we NEED to use the w7 upgrade path? which bloatware remover tool should I be using? which privacy tools should I be using? how can I make it look like windows 7 as much as possible? I hate the tiles and would like the windows explorer function to be more familiar. is it possible to remove some of the crappy candy crush type bloat while keeping the MS Store..I am not sure but I think for VR I need to keep cortana too. are there any tool to make a nice windows 10 pro usb installer so I can do quick easy clean installs? is there anything else I should be thinking about to decrapify w10 and/or so MS doesn't know instantly what I had for breakfast and what I did with my wife on the couch while watching tv? Thanks for any tips, insight and advice.
You could do an anytime upgrade to Pro or Ultimate and upgrade to 10. OR just install 10 and activate it by HWID (google for massgravel on github) or KMS_VL_ALL That will be an neverending story and will result in future problems. Can't help you with that, win 10 has a properly working explorer. Many UWP apps can easily be removed. Rufus is a capable tool or run the MCT directly to USB. Answered before and MSFT doesn't keep track of your home life.
Install Windows 10 Education: - it has the highest chances of successful upgrade from any version of 7-8-10 - it has the least amount of bloatware - it has the least amount of "spyware". Any up-to-date windows 7-8-10 now has telemetry, but Education is the only edition that could get Microsoft bankrupt and it's execs into prison if found spying on academia. Most universities have done their own privacy reviews, and found no personal identifiable data sent to Microsoft - it's just regular telemetry for how windows behaves, power management, errors, that sort of things.
I found out a few months ago that upgrades were still free, so I updated all Win 7 and 8.1 machines to 10. All I did was download and run the Media Creation Tool. All apps, settings, and data were retained. Later, I used one feature to remove the old Windows folder.
Is this still useful? I was under the impression that "windows defender" was not activated if you installed a 3rd party A/V like bitdefender?
If going with a third party A/V, not that much It helps turn ON/OFF defender with a single click, which can be very helpful at times.
The level of expertise shown here is overwhelming, for me. I was left behind in the Win7 time capsule. But here I am. I want to install a clean upgrade of Win10 over the existing Win10 Home version that my ordered laptop will have. So, I need to find an OS version to suit my simple needs. At first, My thoughts were to install Win10 Pro and be happy and done. Researching, I see your recommendation here. It's a couple months old. No big deal. First, where is the Education version located? I downloaded a copy of Win10 20H2 V2. When I run the iso, will I be presented with a selection, including the Education version? Some where I saw about Education and then Education Pro. My goal is simple, but I want the best. for my simple home environment. Looking for any advice I can get. My new machine won't arrive until 1/25/21. so I have time to think.
That can be done by just entering the key for the desired SKU: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...c-20h1-vb_release.80763/page-157#post-1601562 Or by clean install from boot, by using a bootable USB or Burned DVD(9). On both, the Consumer and Business ISO. On an OEM system, which your laptop probably is when it came with Home pre-installed, the 20H2 V2 (consumer) ISO won't offer you to select any SKU, it will install Home, based on the MSDM. To be able to select any of the other available SKUs you need to use an ei.cfg* (put this inside the "ISO/USB:\Sources" folder). Afaik, Pro-Education is based on Pro and telemetry can't be set to 0, 1 only, normal Education is based on Enterprise. * extract the ei.cfg from the zip.