Win10 Free Upgrade Deadline Poll!

 
Of course, my DAW has been Win 10 for about a year now.......the hand raise is for the family PC I've been lazy to upgrade.

You can always upgrade to Windows 10 then revert to Windows 7 if things don't work out (if I recall correctly, it keeps the files necessary to undo the upgrade for 30 days).  That way the free Windows 10 license will be activated for reinstallation at a later date (e.g. when drivers become available, or whatever the issue is).
 
AMB
 

Just need to make sure all your hardware has good driver support for Win 10.....(which I think the majority of vendors have already done this....YMMV).

Made the deadline! Got Win 10 up and running on a newer, larger SSD (and added a SATA hot swap in one of my 5.25" drive bays) a little past midnight this morning (Jul 29)! Also got new DAW desk furniture. I have Win 10 on my work computer, so it's not totally foreign to me.

I burned up five Win 8 Pro upgrade pre-order key codes that I bought but never installed in the past couple of weeks to clean install it on a small herd of old machines. Everything works, but the installer and Win 10 could not find a driver for the graphics card on the oldest machine. Fixed that with a Vista beta from the manufacturer.
 
My niece was over yesterday, and had never heard of the upgrade offer (does mostly cell phone browsing and email) and wanted me to help her upgrade her Win 8.0 laptop which apparently had not seen Windows update for a month of Sundays. To begin, although she had no less than five antivirus programs installed, she managed to collect a couple of dozen infected files. Then we started trying to get to 8.1---147 updates that took well over 5 hours to locate and download on my high speed connection. I assume that the update servers were taking a pounding.  Trying to use the automated get Windows 10\update this computer now resulted in another several hours of slow activity but no success. By then I was getting worried about the deadline. I used a usb drive on which I had the installer already, but made the mistake of  clicking the check for updates button during installation and the install went into checking for updates for several more hours. Cancelling the install left me watching the clean up screen for another hour and a half before I gave up. Finally I forced a reboot, and started again from the USB drive skipping the check for updates and everything went fine. Finished a good 22 hours before the midnight UTC 10 deadline with an activated Win 10 installation and her files intact except for the ones caught by the virus scan. Anyone who has not done this by now is probably SOL. Definitely use the media creation tool to make a USB drive and run it from there.

slartabartfast
I burned up five Win 8 Pro upgrade pre-order key codes that I bought but never installed in the past couple of weeks to clean install it on a small herd of old machines. Everything works, but the installer and Win 10 could not find a driver for the graphics card on the oldest machine. Fixed that with a Vista beta from the manufacturer.
 
My niece was over yesterday, and had never heard of the upgrade offer (does mostly cell phone browsing and email) and wanted me to help her upgrade her Win 8.0 laptop which apparently had not seen Windows update for a month of Sundays. To begin, although she had no less than five antivirus programs installed, she managed to collect a couple of dozen infected files. Then we started trying to get to 8.1---147 updates that took well over 5 hours to locate and download on my high speed connection. I assume that the update servers were taking a pounding.  Trying to use the automated get Windows 10\update this computer now resulted in another several hours of slow activity but no success. By then I was getting worried about the deadline. I used a usb drive on which I had the installer already, but made the mistake of  clicking the check for updates button during installation and the install went into checking for updates for several more hours. Cancelling the install left me watching the clean up screen for another hour and a half before I gave up. Finally I forced a reboot, and started again from the USB drive skipping the check for updates and everything went fine. Finished a good 22 hours before the midnight UTC 10 deadline with an activated Win 10 installation and her files intact except for the ones caught by the virus scan. Anyone who has not done this by now is probably SOL. Definitely use the media creation tool to make a USB drive and run it from there.

Wow!!
 
After all that work, I bet you she'll still go back to her cell phone browsing.......

You can still get it free if you say that you didn't know or didn't see
(impaired), from what I hear they do not check and don't seem to really care. Just sayin'
I went ahead and all is well, just had to reauthorize with XLN. It is better.
Thinking about getting the Anniversary update. Should I stay or should I go. ...
J

http://www.tenforums.com/windows-10-news/57852-windows-10-free-upgrade-customers-who-use-assistive-technologies.html

Mesh

jbow
You can still get it free if you say that you didn't know or didn't see
(impaired), from what I hear they do not check and don't seem to really care. Just sayin'
I went ahead and all is well, just had to reauthorize with XLN. It is better.
Thinking about getting the Anniversary update. Should I stay or should I go. ...
J

I actually tried a few attempts before the expiration date and ran into a couple dead stops which the Win 10 upgrade couldn't proceed (can't remember the exact problems.....fixed one of them, but not sure what the second one was and it just reverted back to Win 8). I wish it didn't do that and gave me an option to fix/check into it first.... 
 
Anyway, I didn't try after the expiration date......good to know this is still possible.
 
Julian, which method did you use to upgrade? (I downloaded their installer software and went that path)

I don't know. I think I just clicked the little offer box and followed the instructions. I think the link probably gives you instructions on how to proceed now to get it free. I'm sure they can tell if you've tried and failed but I really, truly do not think they care or would even look to see. I'm pretty sure they would just give it to you if you told them you tried, had to roll back, etc, etc... I think they still really just want everyone moved to W10.
There should be a link or something in Settings/updates but I'd ask maybe on tenforums. Fireberd might know.
 
J

All my putters are Win 10 Pro (except my ADK laptop, that's Home). The Lovely Lady's? No, She's on 8.1 and due to her concern that some of her work related apps (highly specialized custom apps provided by developers in a small niche market) may not work in Win 10, she would not (and actually could not) make the time to install Win 10 to test it to see if anything failed.
 
So we'll just wait until her system dies such that we need to replace it and we will do so with Win 10 at that time and deal with the fallout (if any).
 
And, there's no need to tell me all the ways I could have or should have handled it for her. I've been in IT for over 30 years and have built and installed hundreds of computers and OS's. There's only one rule here. The customer/lovely lady is always right.