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 Post Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 11:12 pm 
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First a bit of history...

I wanted to do an upgrade install from Windows 7 to 10 before the free upgrade deal expires on July 29th, 2016 (would not be surprised to see that extended). I will probably go back to Windows 7 but wanted to get 10 up and running so I could image for possible later use. The problem is that my desktop seems to not be able to upgrade, failed three times. I believe that the failure is due to not having enough drive space for the 'Windows.old' folder that would be created on an upgrade but cannot prove. My system drive is only 240GB in size and my free space is only around 65GB, not enough for 'Windows.old'. So let's do a clean install instead and do my major installs, image with Acronis and Windows imaging, stash away the drive with the images and restore 7.

I DID find an issue after one of the upgrade attempts that relates to something that happened to a CH member, I believe Allyson. After the third attempt at the upgrade seemed to fail I restarted the system. It sat there just about forever installing 1 update. I thought that mayhaps the upgrade finally took. When it finally finished I ended up back at the Win 7 log in. What makes me think that the issue that Allyson? saw was the same as to all the updates in 7 that should not have been is the fact that I then had ~240 updates to do. I think that Allyson? MAY have experienced a failed 10 upgrade even if she did not know it was going on.

So anyway I did a clean install of Windows 10. I know that there is a lot of talk that you cannot do this for free but it just is not true. It is said that if you want a clean install you have to upgrade then select from within Win 10 to do a total reinstall. Again this is not true, you just cannot do a clean install via Windows Updates.

To do a clean install from scratch you have to download the Windows 10 media creation tool and make a bootable USB device or DVD. I went with a DVD.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwar ... /windows10
I burned the DVD and booted. During the very early stages I was asked for a key code. I entered a valid Windows 7 Ultimate code and there was no issue.

From this point I still had the option to upgrade but chose to do a clean install... shoot, upgrade had already failed three times. I selected my SSD and formatted then did the install. ~20-25 minutes later I was finished and at my desktop running Windows 10 Pro.

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 Post Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 11:31 pm 
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As an added note I would like to mention that I do not intend to return to Windows 7 due to not liking Windows 10. Personally I think that 10 is OK. It is just a matter of appearance. My desktop system is designed for media display and my desktop 'wallpaper' is actually a selection of video files. This desktop feature is a throw back to Vista's Dreamscenes desktop. Unfortunately the thing needs Aero to function which is excluded in Windows 8/8.1/10. After doing the registry hack to enable Dreamscenes the options are there to enable a video to be the wallpaper but without Aero it can't function.

I really don't understand why MS got rid of Aero.

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 Post Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 11:53 pm 
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Likely got rid of Aero because they were already envisioning one code to run on all devices, and aero is, no doubt, a bit top-heavy. Likely hardware on tablets and phones couldn't handle it either. Just my supposition.

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 Post Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 12:06 am 
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You are probably right. :(

But Aero sure IS pretty! ;) I'll get over it eventually. Who knows? I may end up just staying with 10. After all my only issue is appearance.

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 Post Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 2:47 am 
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Sigh, already back to Windows 7 on my media system, two reasons for this.

1) I just HAVE to have Aero so I can have my animated video desktops.

2) I REALLY wanted to test the registry hacks to which Patty linked in this post:
viewtopic.php?p=13597#p13597
I intended to test these registry hacks on the Win 7 side of my dual boot on my laptop but that proved to not be doable for some reason. I found it not possible to un-hide the Get Windows 10 update as it did not appear when I selected to un-hide updates. Yet there is no sign of the update on the system. It is like the update was never there. It is possible that this is due to the fact that the other side of the dual boot is already Win 10. I just do not know.

As a note I'm REALLY happy with Acronis. I have images for my media system install via both Windows imaging and Acronis. Since I've already done a restore with the Windows Imaging I decided to try the Acronis restore. Once I was booted to the Acronis recovery CD it only took ~15 minutes to wipe my system drive and restore my Win 7 image and be back at my desktop. This is ~15 minutes to restore a 192GB system drive. I think that is pretty danged good.

WAIT A MINUTE! This is really weird! When I made the images my Windows 7 system drive showed 192GB used. After the Acronis image restore my used space now only shows as 121GB. Everything still seems to work. Nothing that I've tried to launch has failed. There can be no loss of data files as they are on a totally different drive as is my mail store. How the heck did I gain 71GB of free space by restoring an Acronis image????

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 Post Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 7:11 am 
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 Post Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 10:23 am 
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Acronis probably doesn't restore shadow copy files or restore points- just a guess though.


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 Post Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 12:44 pm 
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You got it David. I just checked and no restore points. :)

I also went through and cleaned up some things such as games I never play. I now have my 240GB SSD down to 101GB used and 121GB free. I know that the numbers do not up but I have enabled EFI on my system which adds a couple of partitions. One is for EFI handling and the other is an MBR backup.

Of course the 121GB free space will decline as System Restore files populate. Still the 101GB used space is a LOT better than the previous 192GB used.

I have to do a bit of research but I may kill a few other games as well. These would be games that I DO play such as Diablo III. Using Diablo III as an example I need to see if I can kill the thing and then re-install to my data drive while still keeping my two level 70 characters. Putting such games as Diablo and Fable to my data drive would drastically reduce the used space on my SSD and also cut dramatically the number of write cycles to the SSD. My system is fast enough that I'd never see a difference in game play.

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