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What Happens to the Old Win 7 and Win 8/8.1 Files


DJW

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What happens to the Old Win 7 or Win 8/8.1 files when you upgrade to Win 10? Are they still stored on the HD? Is there a file you can delete to free up HD space. I noticed when I run my Super Anti Spyware program that it was scanning files that said "old windows files".

 

Dennis

USA Master Sergeant Ret.

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Duke

 

I upgraded both of our laptops back in August. Mine was from Win 7 Pro and the DW's was from Win 8. The 30 days has come and gone. When I make my weekly system image for each laptop on separate HD's I notice that on mine which was the Win 7 it asks me if I want to restore from Win 7?

 

Dennis

USA Master Sergeant Ret.

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Dennis,

I have not tried to restore one yet but will likely try it just to see how well the reversion works with my new Surface Pro 3. I am trying to decide if I want the new default media programs which I let W10 do this time, as well as the telemetry which I allowed and will again. I will go right back to W10 if I decide to keep my old defaults.

 

If you do images you should have done one and put it on another drive so it was not overwritten by images made later after the upgrade. I have the hard drives from the two laptops I am playing with because I wanted to see if SSDs made as much difference in older systems. I think SSD upgrades makes more difference in older systems that can handle them than SSDs make in newer systems that are already geared for fast boots. Anyway I kept the original Windows 7 image on my wife's desktop as well as the drives on my laptops.

RV/Derek
http://www.rvroadie.com Email on the bottom of my website page.
Retired AF 1971-1998


When you see a worthy man, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, look inside yourself. - Confucius

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ... Voltaire

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I restored my Toshiba laptop back to 8.1 last week. As far as I know the files were stored in a directory clearly labeled as "Old Windows". I did the restore at about the 3 week mark.

Sandie & Joel

2000 40' Beaver Patriot Thunder Princeton--425 HP/1550 ft-lbs CAT C-12
2014 Honda CR-V AWD EX-L with ReadyBrute tow bar/brake system
WiFiRanger Ambassador
Follow our adventures on Facebook at Weiss Travels

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I made an image of my W8.1P laptop and then immediately updated it to W10P. My plan is to test it on the laptop before updating my desktop. So far i have had no real issues, but sometimes it takes a while before they pop up or you are able to find them, so I am glad for the 30 day fall back period Joel reported recently using. If all goes well I will do a clean install of W10P on the laptop. While looking into the clean install process I found it was necessary to first upgrade where MS sucks up some identifying information from your computer while doing so. Once upgraded though one supposedly should never need to authenticate again. Mentions here of W10 automatically deleting "windows.old" after 30 days got me to wondering how MS would deal with falling back using your own image? Will there be issues, i.e. updates, etc? Since in days gone by you could move your OS to new hardware by simply putting in the key now without one how is this going to work? Since it was technically an upgrade did it consume your licensed copy of the previous OS in the process? Will you never be able to run another version of Windows? How many times can you fall back on their image before you can no more. Love to hear your comments thoughts on this. I for one I have never considered MS a good guy so I guess I am still waiting for a punch line.

Later,

J

PS

2012 Landmark, San Antonio

2013 Silverado CC, 3500HD, Duramax, DRW, 4x4

Backup, side and hitch cameras, Tireminder TPMS

 

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It's my understanding that most modern computers (Win 7 and later) have a Windows authentication embedded in ROM. The upgrade to 10 is facilitated by the fact that the computer is already authenticated so no authorization codes need to be provided. Presumably, when I reverted back from 10 to 8.1 the same authentication code is still being used.

Sandie & Joel

2000 40' Beaver Patriot Thunder Princeton--425 HP/1550 ft-lbs CAT C-12
2014 Honda CR-V AWD EX-L with ReadyBrute tow bar/brake system
WiFiRanger Ambassador
Follow our adventures on Facebook at Weiss Travels

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I do like MS, their horrible business practices of unfairly competing against Netscape by including IE for free with the OS, is hilarious in view of Google and Amazon's perfectly acceptable use today of the exact same thing, and more.

 

Having said that, my fist tests of Windows 8, which I paid $14.95 ea for four licenses did not go well until later when I learned it using a Windows Surface RT and then the Windows 8 tablets. But I installed on my two laptops and two desktops first and grew to hate it. So I imaged the systems with 8 on them, used my Win 7 images and brought them back to 7. I went back and forth between 7 & 8. No problems.

 

In other words I'm not sure but that was my concern initially and it wasn't an issue then.

RV/Derek
http://www.rvroadie.com Email on the bottom of my website page.
Retired AF 1971-1998


When you see a worthy man, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, look inside yourself. - Confucius

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ... Voltaire

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Good typo, good catch Ray! I'll leave it. :lol:

RV/Derek
http://www.rvroadie.com Email on the bottom of my website page.
Retired AF 1971-1998


When you see a worthy man, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, look inside yourself. - Confucius

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ... Voltaire

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