Windows 10 Upgrade Topics

There is much discussion now about recent changes in the Windows 10 upgrade notifications and behavior, and the scheduled July 29 end of the free upgrade availability. Below are some recent articles that address these topics.

• Windows 10 Hits 300 Million Active Devices, Free Upgrade Still Ends July 29
• Microsoft Will Turn Off Windows 10 Upgrade Nagware In July
• The Ability to Cancel or Schedule the Windows 10 Upgrade is Not New

An alternative to upgrading in-place is to perform a clean install. This requires more work, but results in better performance and reliability by virtue of not carrying forward the baggage and debris accumulated by years of running Windows 7 or 8. Below are some articles about clean installation.They cover much of the same ground, with some variation in wording. The first link gives important details about the overall process, including how to handle your programs, files and settings. Note: in order to use the media creation tool you must be logged in with an Administrator account.

• How to clean install Windows the right way
• Microsoft instructions for media creation and clean install
• How to do a Clean Install of Windows 10, the Easy Way
• Revive a Windows 7 system with a clean install
• How to Clean Install Windows 10 on a Solid State Drive

Windows 10 Guides:

• Complete Guide to Windows 10 
• Understand and Configure Privacy Settings

Also see these two Youtube videos:

• 5 Things You Should Do After Upgrading to Windows 10
• Windows 10 Beginners Guide

Windows 10 installing without permission

Click to enlarge

I found many references to this issue, reported by folks who are fighting the same upgrade demon.  The screen shot here shows the history of failed upgrades on one of the Windows 7 office computers that I support. This behavior has sometimes bogged down the computer's performance, hampering the user's productivity.






Below are a few of the links with answers that seem to have the following elements in common:

• Uninstall updates KB3035583, KB2990214, and KB2952664
• If KB3035583 comes back, uninstall it again, then in the updates available for download and install, right-click on it and select Hide update.If that does not work, see the 3rd link below.
• Turn off automatic updates to prevent these from installing again. There is an "Optional" update 'Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro' which IS automatically selected. You'll need to manually select future critical / important updates for installation.

Stop Windows 10 upgrade


Windows 10 upgrading without permission


Removing the get Windows 10 icon


Uninstalling a Windows update


Windows 10 may already be on your PC even if you don’t want it

Windows 10 Issues & Tips

Now that Windows 10 is officially available, various privacy issues are being discussed, along with numerous tips for upgrading from Windows 7 & 8. Here are some selected articles that may be of interest to those who are upgrading to Windows 10 or purchasing new computers with it pre-installed:

• Should You Upgrade?  (from the Houston Chronicle Tech Blog)
• Review  (from TechRepublic)
• Privacy and Data Sharing  (from TechRepublic)
• Using Your Bandwidth  (from the Houston Chronicle Tech Blog)
• Windows 10 Tips  (multiple articles from Paul Thurrott)
• Privacy Tradeoffs (see pages 3-6 of these show notes)

Update 8/21/2015:  Also see:

• Complete Guide to Windows 10 
• Understand and Configure Privacy Settings

VirtualBox and Windows 10

A recent posting on Google+ reported the availability of VirtualBox 5.0.  This page describes how to install it on three related "flavors" of Linux, so I decided to take it for a spin to see how it handles a preview version of Windows 10. Below is a screen shot that shows Windows 10 running on the virtual machine on my Ubuntu 14.04 Linux desktop.

Click above for larger view.

I was testing the performance with the live video stream of this week's Security Now netcast and opened the Windows 10 "menu" for display on the left side of the window. The Linux desktop has the same elements that I described in my earlier post that made use of the Kernel-based Virtual Machine.

For the VirtualBox virtual machine I allocated more CPU, memory and disk space than before, and the video performance seemed to improve accordingly. This virtual machine was also able to produce the audio generated by Windows 10. My previous work with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine did not produce audio, but there is probably a setting I needed to change to make it work.

The two virtual machines that I used require about the same level of effort to configure.

TPWINLOG 2015 in Windows 10

Click above for large view

TPWINLOG 2015 installed flawlessly in the Windows 10 Technical Preview that I have running in a virtual machine hosted by Ubuntu 14.04 Linux. This screen shot shows the program window displaying some practice contacts I entered for test purposes. I also verified that the Print ToFile feature produces the desired text file.

I don't know yet if I can test the CW send feature with this arrangement.

Windows 10 Preview on Linux Virtual Machine

Click above for a larger view.

Here is a screen shot of the Windows 10 Technical Preview running as a guest OS in a virtual machine in Ubuntu 14.04. Windows 10 is in the smaller window (1024 x 768) in the center of the wide screen (1920 x 1080) Linux display. It can also be run in full screen mode.

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine is configured to use one CPU core, 2 GB RAM and 12 GB disk space.  The Windows 10 setup asked for 11.1 GB of disk space. After install there was 2.64 GB of free disk space. A bunch of apps were downloaded and installed automatically after the basic Windows 10 installation completed.


At the far left of the Linux screen is the standard Ubuntu Unity launcher (dock). At the far right is the Conky Seamod widget that shows various aspects of resource usage on the host PC.

My reference for setting up the virtual machine was this article. Performance of Windows 10 is quite good under this configuration, and gives a good opportunity to try out the preview version.