Hi Further to your post dated 17 July, I have now upgraded to Windows 10 but not how I had planned! I tried upgrading using the ISO file but then got a screen asking me for a Windows 10 activation code, with no option to bypass that screen. I am sure that option used to be available as of course W10 is currently free but perhaps Microsoft have changed thiings? Instead I opted to upgrade via the taskbar option and this has proved successful and the whole process took approximately two hours from that point. I have had one issue in that Kaspersky Internet Security needed a W10 compatibility update and I could only do that by a forced uninstallation of the original programme and reinstalling via their downloadable update.Other than this everything is working OK so far. I have taken note of your recommendation to make another backup image (I presume you mean a backup image of W10 and not the drive itself) in readiness for the August update. Hopefully there should be no activation issues this time.That's interesting.I've never seen one take less than about 6 hours. Also, did you remember to run the W10 COMPATIBILITY TEST during the upgrade? A lot of people forget or don't know to do this and that takes extra time too. No one here on WF has reported a time less than 6 hours for a W7->W10 upgrade, unless I missed something. This also includes the Tech Preview versions too. Also, I've done a W8.1 upgrade to W10 and that takes the least amount of time, since there are many fewer updates from 8.1 going to 10 than from W8 or W7. I remember that one taking about 8-10 hrs. or so.
W10 COMPATIBILITY TEST
Get Windows 10 app - Check Compatibility Report for Windows 10
On your Dell laptop, how big was the used portion of your W7 drive? The size of your windows+data on the bootdrive makes a difference too. I've done upgrades on my test machine which have less than 20GB for bootdrive usage. Still took 6 hrs.+
Good luck with your upgrade!And don't forget to make another backup image to external media, as a HUGE W10 Anniversary Update is coming on Aug. 2nd which is what Microsoft calls a "roll-up" update, which means it contains all the updates since Nov. 2015 last year. This is going to be the size of a Service Pack (e.g.: W7 SP1). We anticipate it causing problems on many machines. fyi.
BBJ
Hi, thanks for your Email. The version of W10 I now have is V1511 OS Build 10586,494. As for the backup image, I thought you meant the whole drive, but just wanted to check. In actual fact I have Acronis True Image 2016 so I will use that to do this task. In the meantime I am trying to get used to the foibles of W10 but it seems pretty user friendly so far!Hi Geoff,
Thanks for posting back. Glad you got it fixed!Thanks for letting us know about your final solution. If you wouldn't mind when you get a minute, can you do the WINVER command I mentioned in Post #5 and let us know what your resulting version of W10 turned out to be?
Actually, the backup image of W10 I mean is a SNAPSHOT of the entire hard drive including Recovery Partition, System Partitions, and Diagnostic partitions. W10 can have from 5-10 partitions total. The reason you want to do this is should your hard drive crash, and you have to replace it, you'll have no way to reproduce all those partitions if you only backup the W10 system partition, and you won't have all the other required stuff on that drive should you ever need it, unless you made or purchased a full W10 Recovery Disc set!
Here's a look at a brief video tutorial on how the Macrium backup works, it explains how it works and shows you a live backup demo. I believe it will answer many of your questions:
Best,
BBJ