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Should I upgrade from Windows 7 now? What are you using?


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I'm currently reading around on this but wanted to see what folks here are doing. What version of Windows are you guys using and how's it working out for you for audio production? It looks like I can still legitimately upgrade to Windows 10 for free. I was considering upgrading my BIAS FX to version 2 during holiday season and it looks like they don't even support Windows 7 anymore, but 8 and above. Sooner or later I know I'll have to leave Windows 7 behind. I'm on an i7 4770k 3.40ghz. 

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I always had issues with Windows 7, so when the free upgrade to 10 came around a couple years ago, I jumped at it and never regretted it. I find Windows 10 to be a much better experience, and all my audio software runs better on it. That's just my anecdotal 2 cents, FWIW...

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I have had a few issues with upgrading to WIN10, including on one machine, I had to do a complete reinstall.  But overall, WIN10 is a much smoother and nicer experience overall.  Right now going to 1903 on my machines.  

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8 hours ago, balinas said:

I have had a few issues with upgrading to WIN10, including on one machine, I had to do a complete reinstall.  But overall, WIN10 is a much smoother and nicer experience overall.  Right now going to 1903 on my machines.  

Same here - On one machine I had to re-install Windows 7 completely and do the upgrade from the clean install.

I highly recommend getting a new drive, cloning your existing on onto it, removing your old drive and doing the upgrade on the new one. It it fails, at least you've got your old drive intact.

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2 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Same here - On one machine I had to re-install Windows 7 completely and do the upgrade from the clean install.

I highly recommend getting a new drive, cloning your existing on onto it, removing your old drive and doing the upgrade on the new one. It it fails, at least you've got your old drive intact.

Hmm do you know why win10 wouldn't install over your win7 at its then current state but only on a reinstallation of win7? Like, what happened along the way, i.e. what dialogs or whatever popped up and what did they say, if you recall? I'm asking because at this link here https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/  - they mention that a few people had issues updating to win10 but that they were all fixed by trying one or more of the available fixes that are available at the links in that article. 

Anyway your advice is good even though I'd have to buy new drive. So just to be clear your suggestion is:

1. Get a new drive and install it along side the old system drive. 

2. Clone the old system drive to the new drive and then remove the old drive for safe keeping/backup if necessary. 

3. On the new system drive that is an exact copy of the old system drive, reinstall win7 over the current win7 installation (as opposed to wiping the drive and then installing win7 on it, which of course would negate the point of having cloned the old drive onto it). 

4. Then upgrade to win10 from there. 

______

Is all that correct? Thanks 

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47 minutes ago, Christian Jones said:

Hmm do you know why win10 wouldn't install over your win7 at its then current state but only on a reinstallation of win7? Like, what happened along the way, i.e. what dialogs or whatever popped up and what did they say, if you recall? 

I'd been using my Win 7 for several years. I suspect it was some driver that was the issue, but in any case, the upgrade failed with some crazy Microsoft error code followed by a blue screen.

At that point I could no longer boot.

So no Win 7 left, and no Win 10 either.

47 minutes ago, Christian Jones said:

3. On the new system drive that is an exact copy of the old system drive, reinstall win7 over the current win7 installation (as opposed to wiping the drive and then installing win7 on it, which of course would negate the point of having cloned the old drive onto it). 

No - don't re-install win 7 over it. Upgrade your existing "cloned" win 7 to windows 10.

My point is, if you clone your drive and do the upgrade on that you've got something to go back to.

You've no idea whether the upgrade will succeed or not, and you've also no idea whether it'll trash your existing system or not.

If you're happy to reinstall from scratch, then go that route.

But I did have other systems that upgraded without issue, with all their programs intact. Given that it takes me 2-3 days to get everything installed from scratch, it's a big time saver if the upgrade succeeds.... but if it fails, well that's the risk.

Edited by msmcleod
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I wouldn't bother upgrading Win7 to Win 10.

Get a new hard drive.

Then just clean install Win 10 and all of your applications and plugins on the new hard drive. Keep the old drive in a safe place in case you need to fall back.

You will have a much cleaner and more stable operating system as a result. No point in carrying over all of the crud that built up in Windows 7 over these past years. Start fresh!!! :D

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49 minutes ago, abacab said:

No point in carrying over all of the crud that built up in Windows 7 over these past years. Start fresh!!

 

2 hours ago, msmcleod said:

You've no idea whether the upgrade will succeed or not, and you've also no idea whether it'll trash your existing system or not.

If you're happy to reinstall from scratch, then go that route.

But I did have other systems that upgraded without issue, with all their programs intact. Given that it takes me 2-3 days to get everything installed from scratch, it's a big time saver if the upgrade succeeds.... but if it fails, well that's the risk.

Yeah. I'm just *really* not in the mood to reinstall everything lol. I mean I'll do it if I have to, but what if I did reinstall win7 over the existing win7 installation on the cloned drive... would that at least rewrite the old crud and give me essentially a fresh slate of win7 to install win10 over and thus I can just upgrade without having to reinstall everything? 

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1 minute ago, Christian Jones said:

 

Yeah. I'm just *really* not in the mood to reinstall everything lol. I mean I'll do it if I have to, but what if I did reinstall win7 over the existing win7 installation on the cloned drive... would that at least rewrite the old crud and give me essentially a fresh slate of win7 to install win10 over and thus I can just upgrade without having to reinstall everything? 

No. Re-installing win 7 over the existing one would wipe the existing win 7 install, including all of your programs.

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I did an upgrade of four computers from Win 7 x64 Pro to Win 10 x64 Pro (for free back when). I clean installed two computer with Win 10. One of which was an upgraded computer that had a C:\ hard drive crash after a power failure (would not boot). That was my DAW (😫). If you know anything about my DAW it has miles and miles of plugs and libraries. It truly took nearly two weeks installing everything but it also allowed me to discard two DAW product I got as crossgrades in the dark days after SONAR's development was stopped (MIxcraft & Samplitube). 

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7 hours ago, craigb said:

Someone once said they knew of a plug-in that Bapu didn't have.  Naturally, I didn't believe such nonsense! 😉

Bapu has a lot of plug-ins? I did not know that. It's not like he's ever mentioned it or anything.

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If you clean install Windows 10 you are 99.5% less likely to be that guy posting around here down the road about some weird crash or error message on their DAW.

I clean installed my Windows 10 Pro three years ago, and it still runs flawlessly. It did take me about 1-2 weeks to get all of my software and plugins installed and configured, but yeah, I'd say it was worth it in the long run.

I keep Windows auto updates off, and run the monthly quality and security updates about 3 weeks after they are released. I also stay one version behind on the major semi-annual version (feature) updates.  This strategy allows some time for MS to fix and re-issue any bad updates that are discovered by the early adopters. My plan "B" is that I take a full system drive image before any updates. I can roll my system back in 35-40 mins at anytime.

Running Win 10 Pro 1809 currently.

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19 hours ago, msmcleod said:

No. Re-installing win 7 over the existing one would wipe the existing win 7 install, including all of your programs.

Not true, there is something called an in-place reinstall for Windows 7:  

  http://www.illawarrapcug.org.au/Tricks/Win7%20No%20Reformat%20Nondestructive%20Reinstall.pdf

 

I have done this and it works!

 

 

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