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.
Everything or almost has been working fine so far, got two PC's running w10 20H2 and my wife's work PC is still running w7 and all have been working nicely barring some network issues where sometimes the PC's just don't want to see each other and or give errors when it comes to file sharing over lan with an error like this: Windows cannot access \\PROBLEMPC\SHAREDFOLDER Details says: Error code: 0x80070035 - The network path was not found. That said I just got hit with some updates on one of the w10 PC's and today it's asking me to install feature update 21H1. I looked at this thread here: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...-4-pc-20h1-2-21h1-2-vb_release.80763/page-474 but don't really relish reading 400+ pages to see whats up with this update. Any quick recap of do's and don't for this update? I see one person was having issue where since updating his PC wants to allot virtual pagefile memory rather than use his physical ram but it seems to be a one off problem no one else is having? If I do this update feature will I need to redo any of the tweaks I initially did when I first installed 20H2 as seen in in post #7 in this thread? Anything in particular that I should be aware of about this update?
The 21H1 EP is just a small update, it will install in a few seconds. ps, don't base anything on just one post. Considering we actually are now on 21H2 (19044.xxx), The 21H2 EP was released sept. 30. 2021.
Ok so might be time to upgrade my wife PC to w10 from w7...... Can I use the w10 education usb key i made for myself here to upgrade her PC WITHOUT DATA loss as i just upgrade the OS but still have all her programs and steam and such installed?
AFAIK direct upgrading from Win7 is only possible to Home or Pro. 7 Starter, HomeBasic, HomePremium → Win 10 Home 7 Professional, Ultimate → Win 10 Pro 7 Enterprise → Win 10 Enterprise (just a guess) You might still be able to use the USB for upgrading as all Pro and higher Editions are part of the same family and can be switched instantly by a key. Will not work for Home Editions if the USB does not contain Home. Btw. upgrading from 7 will NOT give a free license anymore. Nor will entering a Windows 7 key into Windows 10. Officially, you need to buy a license, unofficially, KMS or MAS.
Alright then will most likely just back up what needs backing up then and do a fresh install instead like usual.