New laptop; replacing Windows 7 with Windows 10

[John Roberts]

It's a HP250 G5, I set it up myself and seem to have ended up with Windows 7 instead of 10- I really don't get on with 10 but everybody tells me that it's the future and that I should bite the bullet and go for 10. Fuck.

At the moment busy following the installation leaflet and as suggested have backed up my personal files (the only ones I can think of are a couple of thousand photos I downloaded off an SD card, I should have deleted them all if I had known that it was going to take so long-a couple of hours- that can't be right, two whole effing hours??) The instructions were available in the Win 7: Select>Start>HP>Help and Support>User Guides

At last the screen says it's all backed up.

Anyway, worry #1 is that a few minutes ago I noticed a suggestion in the first paragraph (how could I have missed that?) that "to take full advantage of the Win 10 features I should have enabled UEFI: Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Native Boot mode in the BIOS settings before installing Win 10.
* Am I too late to do so?
* Would it be better if I started again and did so even though I've backed up already?

The next hurdle is where it says to insert the Windows 10 operating system media into the the available optical drive (that would be the DVD drawer, right?) Well, I have two DVDs: Application and Driver Recovery DVD, and the other: oh, there are two in this envelope actually, they are System Recovery DVD, dics 1 & 2.

* Do I go for the Application and Recovery DVD? Or perhaps one or both of the other two discs?

Look, I'm trying hard not to feel stupid here, but if I don't know then I don't know, right? I feel sick.

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

You don't need UEFI.
What does it say on the recovery media, does it say it is win 10? Most of the machines at work that came with 7 although licensed for 10 didn't have win 10 recovery media, it had to be downloaded. Yours may easy be different of course.

 

[wessie]

Haven't you missed the boat for a free upgrade to Win 10? Cut off date was 31 July 2016 but seems there is a ruse...
http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/microsoft-windows-10-free-upgrade-offer-assistive-features/

 

[John Roberts]

You don't need UEFI.
What does it say on the recovery media, does it say it is win 10? Most of the machines at work that came with 7 although licensed for 10 didn't have win 10 recovery media, it had to be downloaded. Yours may easy be different of course.

Umm... there are two Recovery DVDs: the Application and Driver and then the System ones (the pair of discs.) The System Recovery DVDs are for W10.

Anyway, these are "Recovery" DVDs, are they really what I need for the initial installation of W10?

 

[John Roberts]

Haven't you missed the boat for a free upgrade to Win 10? Cut off date was 31 July 2016 but seems there is a ruse...
http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/microsoft-windows-10-free-upgrade-offer-assistive-features/

I only got this laptop last Friday and it was bought with W10, I wasn't expecting it to have W7 on at all. It came with the two DVDs mentioned- both (rather worryingly) having "Recovery" on their labels.

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

It's the recovery media that you want. It's very rare to have an upgrade disk or even a straight windows install disk. You will loose everything on the machine and it will come out with a clean install of win 10 which isn't a bad thing. Stick disk one in and boot to it then just follow the instructions.

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

To be clear it is the system disks you want. The pair of them.

 

[John Roberts]

Ah, thank you! How long will it take, any idea? I ask because I really am desperately tired, but then again I'm not sure if it's safe to leave the job unfinished overnight... will it take an hour or perhaps a couple?? Just a guess will do.

 

[John Roberts]

To be clear it is the system disks you want. The pair of them.

Why the fuck couldn't Mr Bill fucking Windows fucking Gates tell me which one to use? You're a better man than him Gunga Din, for sure!

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

Don't blame him those aren't his disks blame HP.

 

[John Roberts]

Don't blame him those aren't his disks blame HP.

Oh bugger. Sorry, William.

And as for you, fucking Hewlet and fucking Packard ...


And thank you, Marki.

 

[jonny5859]

If you havent already set yourself up an outlook/microsoft account and sign in on it through the laptop sign in options and it registers win10 with that account so if you ever lose those disks you can download a fresh win10 from microsoft and install it and not worry about not having a cd key etc

 

[John Roberts]

UPDATE.
Was on the phone with HP Helpline to India for two and a quarter hours. No luck. The technician couldn't access my screen remotely and we got nowhere. No, that isn't quite right, between us we apparently managed to fuck the thing up completely according to the computer man that I called to investigate; apparently it should have been possible to install Win 10 very easily and quickly with the DVD provided. He said that I would be able to demand a new lap top. As it is I need it working before I leave on holiday on Sunday, so we'll see what my man can do.

Pissed off? Immensely.

 

[Grey Beard]

The Win10 ISO disks are on the Microsoft website. You can create a DVD or I think a USB stick with the Win10 software on it.
If your computer already had Win10 on it, the registration of the licence will be automatic. The Microsoft website reads some unique code on the computer motherboard, so you probably don't need a licence key.

You could just do a complete fresh install. As said, before you do that, set yourself up with a Microsoft Outlook, HotMail or Live Mail account and link your software to that account. It will use the same password as used for your Microsoft eMail account for for Skype, OneDrive, Bing, etc.

The fresh install is easy. Just be sure to do a custom setup and limit your private data made publicly available, as Win10 is Spyware Central (almost as bad as Google!!)

I must say, I haven't been impressed with Microsoft Win10 tech support. I have failed to make a system image on my son's Lenovo Laptop, but had no problems on two Dells and a Desktop. MS Tech Help give me several suggestions, but nothing has worked so far for the Lenovo System Image, though it is otherwise perfect.

Grey Beard

 

[John Roberts]

Another update:

We have lift-off! The computer man got it sorted. He said that whatever the HP Helpline and I had done it had interfered with the information that runs the machine rather than the operating system. I think.

Anyway, all seems well.

Thank you all for holding my hand at this difficult time; I really neede to get my tickets, car rental and hotel bookings printed (or at least viewable) before our holiday started on Sunday. And a special thanks to the gentleman who PMed with the offer of help, you know who you are.