Question About Upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 10

[Lesthegringo]

I just did this on my Wife's PC - the Win 7 key appears to still be active for upgrading to Win 10

Les

 

[newbert]

I just did this on my Wife's PC - the Win 7 key appears to still be active for upgrading to Win 10

Les

Thanks - I'm ready to give it a go!

 

[newbert]

Thanks - I'm ready to give it a go!

HELP!!!! Although Win10 installed, it crashes from the desktop after a few seconds and reboots. I was able to uninstall a screen color calibrator which I had loading at start-up in Win 7 (for photography apps), but that didn't help. The problem persists......

Any ideas ? ... other than to bring it to the shop?

Thanks!

 

[RasmusP]

HELP!!!! Although Win10 installed, it crashes from the desktop after a few seconds and reboots. I was able to uninstall a screen color calibrator which I had loading at start-up in Win 7 (for photography apps), but that didn't help. The problem persists......

Any ideas ? ... other than to bring it to the shop?

Thanks!

My best first guess would be to boot into safe mode (google how to do it when you can't really get it to boot safely) and check if that's stable!
Most drivers are disabled in safe mode so it should work if that's the issue.

If that's stable:
Do you have a laptop? Then download Win 10 drivers via the laptop for your PC parts, put them on a USB stick and install all of them while in safe mode.

My other idea would be to create a win 10 install USB stick, boot from that and "repair" your win 10 install. Make sure to select "keep all data" or whatever the menu says.

If you have a laptop and a usb stick you can simply download a tool from microsoft that will download a win 10 image onto the usb stick and make it bootable. Takes ages but it works with just a few clicks.

BTW: what hardware do you have? Do you know all the parts?

 

[Durge Driven]

Maybe helps someone else in future ....

Australia a Crucial BX500 120GB SSD costs $35AU ( $27US)

That way you can play with W10 till your hearts content without affecting W7 whatsoever
When you want to run W7 disable the W10 SSD in Bios or pull it's power lead

Once you 100% happy with W10 you can commit your drives to one OS or not

Don't put anything on C:\drive that can be run from another partition

 

[newbert]

My best first guess would be to boot into safe mode (google how to do it when you can't really get it to boot safely) and check if that's stable!
Most drivers are disabled in safe mode so it should work if that's the issue.

If that's stable:
Do you have a laptop? Then download Win 10 drivers via the laptop for your PC parts, put them on a USB stick and install all of them while in safe mode.

My other idea would be to create a win 10 install USB stick, boot from that and "repair" your win 10 install. Make sure to select "keep all data" or whatever the menu says.

If you have a laptop and a usb stick you can simply download a tool from microsoft that will download a win 10 image onto the usb stick and make it bootable. Takes ages but it works with just a few clicks.

BTW: what hardware do you have? Do you know all the parts?

Safe Mode is stable (but I'll never remember how I got there).

I have another PC (my gaming PC) and I do know MOST, not all, of the PC in question's components. So I think that option #2 (Create a Win10 install USB Stick...etc) would be best to try. Now I Just need to find an empty USB Stick.

In the meantime, could you be more specific about that tool from Microsoft (perhaps a link, please?) and then how to make USB stick Bootable?

Thanks so much!

 

[RasmusP]

(but I'll never remember how I got there).

That's why I told you to google it. I can't remember either

I have another PC (my gaming PC) and I do know MOST, not all, of the PC in question's components. So I think that option #2 (Create a Win10 install USB Stick...etc) would be best to try. Now I Just need to find an empty USB Stick.

That might not be needed. I would try downloading the correct Win 10 drivers first, installing them and then trying to boot normally...

In the meantime, could you be more specific about that tool from Microsoft (perhaps a link, please?) and then how to make USB stick Bootable?

Yep:

Windows 10 herunterladen

www.microsoft.com

It's called "Windows Media Creation Tool". Can't access the English page, sorry... You need to scroll down a few centimetres to get to the "download the tool" button

 

[newbert]

Uh-Oh.....Big Problem (I think)! It looks like there are NO Windows 10 drivers for my Intel Chipset! (G33/G31 Express Chipset) and FWIW the Stopcode displayed when it reboots is:" IRQL not less or equal."

I guess that this PC is older than I realized - 2011/2012 I think.

But, if there no drivers for some of the hardware, why did the Win10 install program say that it was OK to proceed?

 

[RasmusP]

Win 10 is very "compatible" with lots of stuff. Often Win 7 drivers work fine, although they can't be updated or anything.

2011/12 is a bit off though.. For G33/31 I find Summer 2007 as release date!

Find out what motherboard brand you have and also the model if you can and then google for win 10 drivers. Gigabyte seems to have some for example! AsRock doesn't even list anything from before 2010

 

[Case_]

If there are no drivers for your chipset, they're included in Windows.

"IRQL not less or equal" is usually an issue with an incompatible device driver (or "semi-compatible") you might not even realize is loading, often those that were created for older Windows and are not fully (or at all) optimized for Win10, but still appear to "work". But it can also be caused by problematic/misbehaving/faulty memory, disk, controller...

Also I'm not sure if you did an upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10, or if you did a clean Win 10 install, but upgrading often causes these issues, which is why clean install tends to be the recommended way to go.

 

[newbert]

Thanks again. That's good to know It's a Gateway Computer - I'll have to look up the model #.

If there are no drivers for your chipset, they're included in Windows.

"IRQL not less or equal" is usually an issue with an incompatible device driver (or "semi-compatible") you might not even realize is loading, often those that were created for older Windows and are not fully (or at all) optimized for Win10, but still appear to "work". But it can also be caused by problematic/misbehaving/faulty memory, disk, controller...

Also I'm not sure if you did an upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10, or if you did a clean Win 10 install, but upgrading often causes these issues, which is why clean install tends to be the recommended way to go.

Thanks for that - I did an upgrade from Win7 to Win10 - not a clean installl. Ram, disks, etc should not be a problem since all worked properly under Win7 a few hours before doing the upgrade to Win 10.

I'll probably bring it to the computer repair shop tomorrow. This is getting way over my head!

 

[Case_]

am, disks, etc should not be a problem since all worked properly under Win7 a few hours before doing the upgrade to Win 10.

That's not always a 100% reliable proof, but yeah, certainly makes it less likely.

 

[kevin ohara]

I suspect they will likely say it'll need fresh install of W10. Unless it is something obvious they can resolve in no time they will not want to spend hours trying to diagnose the problem when a fresh install is quicker. In such a case you can get a disk or W10 key for a lot less than they'll charge and do that fresh install yourself. Of course, i can undestand you've had enough of trying to get it to work and prefer to let someone do the fix.

 

[Case_]

(Yeah, that's frequently the problem with issues like these - you can spend hours trying to get to the bottom of it and still not find an acceptable solution where a clean install might have solved it hours ago, or give you an important clue at least. It's a trap many of us can fall into very easily, and doubly so with our own PCs. Even seasoned veterans can fall victim to this very easily, in fact possibly even more so, because when doing troubleshooting/repairs for a customer, you're a lot more conscious of the time spent and the final price of the repair.)

 

[blekenbleu]

While Microsoft actively promoted replacing Windows 7 with 10, they presumably took care to minimize problematic changes. I doubt that continues to be a consideration in Windows 10 updates.
Even at that time, updates from more similar 8.1 to 10 worked less well than fresh installs.

If an installation has transmitted a legit Windows 7 PC "fingerprint" back to the mother ship,
fresh Windows 10 installation on a PC licensed for Windows 7 should not require another license.

 

[Case_]

No matter how much care Microsoft takes, they can't reliably solve incompatibility issues with drivers and other stuff someone has installed on their system when doing an update from old (more like ancient at this point, tbh) system to a new one.