Windows 10 download site

[docj]

Although most people are getting their Windows 10 downloads through the Windows Update process, mine had stalled because the "Are you ready for Windows 10?" app had detected that I was using automatic login and it flagged that as a reason not to update my Toshiba laptop. Even though I had removed the auto login feature it didn't seem to have any direct effect on the app.

 

After researching the issue I came across a Microsoft site from which you can download Windows 10 and from which you can create an installation DVD if you wish. You're not required to make installation media and can use the site for a direct install which I did last night. It took the same couple of hours as any other Windows 10 install and it went without a hitch. The "progress screens" are pretty decent during the install process so I was able to monitor to ensure that things were still going Ok.

 

It's worth noting that this site uses the Windows serial number that most computers these days carry in their ROM so the downloaded copy of Windows is automatically authenticated; you don't need to type anything from any stickers on the bottom of the device.

 

Here's the link to the website if anyone needs it: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Just choose the correct 32-bit or 64-bit option and let it proceed. The only response you will need to make is to tell it to do a direct install "on this computer" if that is what you wish to do.

 

As for Windows 10 itself, others here have a lot more experience than I have so far. I did find that its responsiveness improved significantly after I found how to turn off most of the "background apps" that it had installed.

 

BTW, if you like autologin the process for setting it up is the same for Windows 10 as it was for Windows 8.1. I activated it as soon as the installation had been completed.

[RV_]

Great tip Joel!

Thanks. I am going to try and make a forced install on the old laptop that was native Win 7, but is also only had 2GB of old DDR2 RAM and had only a 120GB HD. http://www.cnet.com/products/hp-compaq-presario-cq60-615dx/specs/

 

I ordered two matched faster sticks of DDR2 for 4 GB RAM, and ordered a 240GB SSD for 59 bucks, a Team brand Dark L3 model that is terrific! That little old 15.6" slow as molasses laptop that used to take almost 2 minutes to boot and another two minutes until it was responsive, now boots in under ten seconds and is really snappy. Feels like a new one with a processor beyond the Celeron 2.2GHz it has. We forget how long we found acceptable for booting back in the XP/Vista days.

 

It shows no incompatible programs or hardware but awhile the others are trying to update all the time until I stopped and canceled the reservations, this one was supposed to be my first to test Win 10 and has to date not upgraded. I will do another Image after this Tuesday's monthly Windows updates as this is also rumored to be the Threshold 2 large Service Pack like update for 10. I have the old hard drive if it fails or messes up and can redo the clone to the SSD if necessary. But I spent the 85 bucks for the RAM and SSD for this one because it is showroom condition case and inside, rarely used, and no signs of wear. It was just old hardware, too little slower RAM, and needed tweaked. It was one of the two free laptops I traded labor for. The other, a 17" Toshiba with lots of wear screams with its new SSD. It already had 4GB of RAM so I let that stay. The SSD was a sale priced 79 buck Samsung EVO 850 3D 250GB SSD. Haven't seen this one for less yet.

 

I am going to make some disks anyway from that link. I still have a stack of 100 DVD-R blanks that will go unused it seems except for restore media for the old Windows 7 computers I still dabble in. I rarely use my thumb drives anymore either. I am getting rid of all but my two 16GB USB3, and two 64GB USB3 drives and getting one more. They are adequate for my needs as the 16s are great for modern restore media.

 

Scratch that. I have two USB 2 8GB Patriot drives that are fast enough for installation media. Much faster than DVD. And the Windows 10 only needs 4GB it says on the website. So I can make one 3 2bit for tablets and one 64 bit for the rest and one of my tablets.

[docj]

My Toshiba Satellite has a 1TB drive that I'm thinking of replacing with an SSD as my Xmas present to myself. It's already a screamer with 16GB of RAM and a 4th gen Core i7. What's your recommendation for an SSD of that size?

[RV_]

Joel,

I hesitate to make recommendations on something like an SSD without the disclaimer that I have gone into them fully prepared to have all data lost on them as they do not give failure warnings like rust drives but when they fail it is just "poof" gone. There are no platters to expensively read by forensic slabs for the well heeled.

 

Having said that with unlimited funds I would go for the Intel drives in the enterprise class which are going to cost more than triple the consumer class drives like I bought.

 

In the consumer class there are several long-term players that are "discount" sellers and for price they offer a decent product. These include Team, Patriot, Adata, and a few more. For the better in consumer drives, which I think I buy, the field for me in looking at the better drives on sale are this order, from best to the just as good "look at the specs, let them decide," are Intel, Samsung, Sandisk, Crucial. I have bought the Team drives and Kingston drives. Team surprised me with a pretty good drive. Kingston was a dog in the consumer sale priced drives and the ones I tried were slow as a rust drives by boot times and use, not testing for benchmarks. OCZ had a lot of advertising and also had a lot of failures among my friends online and off, and had the most refurbs showing up.

 

There are a lot of first time drive upgraders that have no clue about initializing their drives when bought bare. So they slap them in and the computer doesn't see it. They do not know to go to disk management in Administrative tools to initialize, and if asked set the partitions. So they are convinced that the disk is defective and return them. Pretty much all of the "my computer would not recognize the disk when I installed it," complaints are likely good hardware bad keyboard operator who did not know to ask. But when all the refurbs for a time seem to be one brand and you see a lot of bad reviews of folks who did set the drives up, well those I avoid, and OCZ was one early on. They could be great now but my group won't touch them, and Kingston are duds in the low end drives. Just slow. The models I tried were Kingston 240GB 2.5" SSD Now. Newegg and other retailers have been offering three for the price of two on the Kingstons.

 

The drives are good even if you don't have SATAIII chipsets but the SATA 1 chipsets aren't going to work like XP machines. There are workarounds but XP was never set up with trim for SSDs. Windows 7 and above are. And remember to never defrag the SSD drives. That will destroy them at worst, cause them to lose data at best.

 

 

There are many here with experience with other brands, or might like the two I won't try again or the first time. Remember one drive may work well on one chipset and not another. I had a Toshiba drive fail in my i5 Lenovo old backup desktop I sold but it liked my same vintage Windows 7 PC my wife use, a tower desktop, the only one we have. It screams in her computer. I think the drive hidden partition I found out about later was the cause of the error.

 

So remember YMMV. And always be backed up so a drive fail won't sink you. A good way I use is to keep the old drive as a backup to start with again and reload the backed up data to.

 

Last advice. Black Friday and Cyber Monday would be the best bet to shop online.