Windows 10 Clean Install

Well I finally had the time so today I clean installed Windows 10 to my Dell All-in-One Inspiron 2330 and sure enough so far from what I can see, all my issues went away. Paltalk installed though I don't yet know if it works but all the applications giving me issues are all working just fine. Pale Moon is working fine as is our Jobulator
indicator. So only time will tell.

I have made my image file so now the last thing to do is install Emsisoft and see if anything changes because that was my other question mark!

 

I had to for 10 because it wasn't working right in 10 upgrade and I could not reinstall it. But clean it went right in and is working fine. I never stopped using it in 8.1 or Windows 7 though.

 

Well I just realized I was using an older build of Emsisoft and that may have been creating the few issues I had after the clean install. Emsisoft has a bad habit of not updating their site with definition updates current enough so lately I have been downloading it from Bleeping Computer and low and behold my last download was several versions back, something I failed to notice.
You can download from the distributor as well as he keeps himself updated rather well but his server is a bit slow at times.

So that said all is well. I like the speed of bootup I now see, considerably faster than Windows 8.1 and of course Paltalk works flawlessly as William noted a while ago. Overall Windows 10 has some impressive speed and when you start playing under the hood there are quite a few improvements and reasons I now see for moving to Windows 10. Understanding that the hardware I have in my Windows 7 Intel 4670 i5 build with 16Gb 2133 ddr3 ram is considerably faster that the Dell with a Quad core i5 3330 and 8 gb ram, and both units have Ssd drives for OS, the Win 7 unit is only slightly faster now and I may well do a clean install on that one after I have a month or two to watch the progress. So far I have 0 issues on the Windows 10 Dell All-in-One, and that is a first for me since I have owned it!

One other problem that had me curious and I could not explain it is every time I open Macrium to make an image file, there is an update and I always do them. They do not require a reboot but what was happening was the screen would start to blink on and off not allowing any choices. I checked in the Macrium forums and saw no such issue but I remember the unit I had with the AMD FM2+ APU prior to my i5 4670 build did the same thing requiring a reset to reboot. The Dell has now stopped doing that as well after clean install. I can safely say that every rather odd issue is now cleaned up and I am realizing I bought that unit with Windows 8 on it and was so wildly busy at the time I never did a clean install for lack of time. So though I did upgrade to 8.1 and then 10 later, the original OS was likely still on there and even before I was building units I never accepted any oem mfgr out of the box to run. We always would remove it from cartons set it up and then run "killdisk" and replace the OS but last year was my busiest year in business and I had no time for anything for me!

BTW through all of this I noted the free version of Macrium 6 now also has incrementals in it as well, but not differentials so the free version could actually now sustain everything I do with that program though I own the standard version.

 

Glad it's working for you now. I've never been a fan of just doing a upgrade on any Windows platform. I've seen too many issues doing that. A fresh install is always better.

 

And I always agreed with that Ray but somehow I was reading all the hype saying that upgrades have come a long way and they are not having the issues they used to have and I guess I bought that.
What a bunch of BS this thing runs like a different pc and I actually am liking it now for the first time!

 

Unfortunitly right now the upgrade has to be done before a clean install can be done. The upgrade registers your hardware with Microsoft's servers. Then a clean install on the same hardware can be done without the cd key.

After that first activation is complete, you can perform a clean install on that same hardware using an ISO file, which has a product key embedded in it. As long as the hardware matches the previous installation ID, the installation is activated automatically. (Microsoft does not provide details of what goes into the hardware ID, except to confirm that it does not contain any personally identifiable information and is not used for tracking purposes.)

 

I don't think we have to do it that way Ray. I was planning to install once without the key and then upgrade the install from Windows the way we have done with 7 and 8 but because the upgrade was done and was there that was not necessary as I looked even though I put no code in it was activated once I got into Windows.

 

To get 10 for free you have to do the upgrade as it checks to see if you have a legit Windows 7 or 8. People with pirated versions don't get the free upgrade. They will have to download 10 and then buy a key (licence) through Microsoft.

 

Ray is right once the in place upgrade has been done once and activated on your hardware you are good to go and the OS is free and you also have the option of going back to your older operating system too that key is still good for the previous OS. About over the top installs coming a long way, for the most part they have but to truly see how your system will run with the newer OS properly a clean install is far better because there are no 'fluky' elements left over from your previous operating system, drivers included as the new operating system will determine more correctly in a fresh clean install what drivers would best fit the system instead of "retrofitting" from the older OS.

 

What you are both saying makes sense except the original hype released said that pirated Windows versions would also be updated.
I know I questioned that at the time and a number of MVP's said that is the way they understood it.

I wish now I had swapped hard drives so I would have known but that trick of full install being upgraded always worked in the past.
It did create a code different than all the ones of the various OS involved as I copied it.

 

I read that too Rich that they would provide it to for that, but I read it was China only as they have the most pirated Windows.

 

Nice Cindy.

 

Upgrade re-writes to the registry which is a very "volatile" area of the OS so that's where you can run into issues doing an upgrade. I'd rather a clean registry that is tide to the OS.