Wednesday, July 29th 2015
Windows 10 Upgrade Begins Rolling Out in Waves
Microsoft began rolling out of the Windows 10 upgrade to existing users of Windows 8.1 and Windows 7. The upgrade process is handled by a "reservation system," which lets you tell Microsoft in advance that you intend to upgrade, using the Get Windows 10 (GWX) app that's been sticking out in your system-tray over the past month, which looks like the Windows logo. Once "reserved," Windows slowly fetches installation files of Windows 10, and stores them into a temporary directory. When all the installation files and drivers specific to your hardware have been downloaded, the app notifies you that the upgrade can begin at your command.
The upgrade process itself is zero-intervention, and happens much like an iOS or Android OTA upgrade. Once it's installed, you get to customize a handful things, and then you're done. GWX may notify you that your upgrade is ready to begin any time today. If you've not reserved your upgrade, you can still do so, but you may not get to upgrade just yet, maybe over the next "few weeks or months," according to Microsoft. With an estimated 350 million installations queued up for the upgrade, GWX will not be able to fetch the installation files and drivers by maxing out your Internet bandwidth. It will take its own time, as Microsoft servers shed their bandwidth load.
There doesn't appear to be a strict correlation between reservation and upgrade availability. For example, we reserved upgrades for two of our PCs around the same time. The PC with the simpler hardware, programs, and settings, finished with the upgrade, while another one is still queued up. Microsoft will formally launch Windows 10 in media events spread around the world.
The upgrade process itself is zero-intervention, and happens much like an iOS or Android OTA upgrade. Once it's installed, you get to customize a handful things, and then you're done. GWX may notify you that your upgrade is ready to begin any time today. If you've not reserved your upgrade, you can still do so, but you may not get to upgrade just yet, maybe over the next "few weeks or months," according to Microsoft. With an estimated 350 million installations queued up for the upgrade, GWX will not be able to fetch the installation files and drivers by maxing out your Internet bandwidth. It will take its own time, as Microsoft servers shed their bandwidth load.
There doesn't appear to be a strict correlation between reservation and upgrade availability. For example, we reserved upgrades for two of our PCs around the same time. The PC with the simpler hardware, programs, and settings, finished with the upgrade, while another one is still queued up. Microsoft will formally launch Windows 10 in media events spread around the world.
68 Comments on Windows 10 Upgrade Begins Rolling Out in Waves
www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
Just make sure you have your Windows 7/8/8.1 Product Key handy as it becomes your Windows 10 key (if you don't know it or can't find it, use a tool like this to recover it.
Edit: sorry for the misinformation earlier, it appears the consensus is you'll have to upgrade first before performing a clean install, post edited. Thanks RCoon ;)
Cortana really really rox!!! Edge is fast, Start menu is best of 2 worlds. My "old" windows desktop screen now has exclusively My Files stuff, not a single Program related icon. What i do not like is the 2 designs (old win xp-7 style and modern style) both present.
Next step will be to bench some DX12 games, but that will not be tomorrow!
My laptop came pre-installed with windows 8, it's on a hidden partition,
if I want to to do a factory restore from within Windows 10, does it use the hidden partition and restore to Windows 8 on my laptop?
You can create a back up of your new install
it works, now downloading win10
But I think developers will still make an option to run their games in DX11.
The only piece of hardware I don't have working is my Sound Blaster Zx.... but it is Creative and generally their support for new OS is typically non existent.....
My onboard Recon3Di works great though!!!
I have another question however. I use Windows 8.1 Enterprise edition and I can't upgrade to Windows 10 according to Microsoft. However, I do have a spare Windows 7 Ultimate key, is there a tool I can authenticate this key, then install Windows 10 and after that, use that key without me having to install Windows 7 Ultimate first?
If anyone knows, please let me know? Thank you :D
This thread: forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=719317 has a couple of workarounds in the meantime though.
www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/3eyrre/fix_for_the_80240020_error_when_trying_to_install/
Its not so bad if you have to reinstall 7/8 then upgrade again, but it'd be nice to know if our keys get upgraded and can be used for either OS at a later date for clean install.