PC hardware and OS (Win 7 or Win10) upgrade questions

[Santuzzo]

I still have Win7 64bit on my PC which I use for home recording (running Cubase).
It's not a DAW-only PC, I also use this PC for other stuff like emailing, using spreadsheets and office documents, but it's not a gaming PC (anymore).

I have no complaints about my current system, even though also this is a PC I built about 10 years ago.

I'm not sure whether or it I should get Windows10. In about a year MS will stop updates for Win7, would that potentially put my system in danger with regard to security issues?
Another reason I'm thinking of is at some point any new software I may purchase in the future may not be compatible with Win7 anymore.
Does that make sense or am I missing something?

And a completely other thought/question was: would I be better off also upgrading my PC considering it's a 10 year old system. It has an Asus P6t deluxe motherboard and an i7 processor, currently 6mb RAM.
Any thoughts/advice?

 

[odibrom]

Save yourself headaches and get a new laptop PC... The more RAM the better...

The thing about old OS is mostly drivers, you get a new piece of gear and drivers will be... you know incompatible. Besides, I think the upgrade to Win10 is free, but is your PC suitable for the upgrade?

 

[Santuzzo]

Save yourself headaches and get a new laptop PC... The more RAM the better...

The thing about old OS is mostly drivers, you get a new piece of gear and drivers will be... you know incompatible. Besides, I think the upgrade to Win10 is free, but is your PC suitable for the upgrade?

Thank you.
I also have a laptop PC with win8 on it, but I don't use it for recording. For some reason I prefer a desktop format PC with two monitor screens for music recording.
If I decide to get a new PC for recording I'll definitely get another desktop PC (I'd probably build it myself).

I used to get those free win10 upgrade messages on my PC but I switched those off as I got annoyed by them and I didn't want to upgrade at the time. I don't think the free upgrade is still available and I also would prefer a new clean install if I choose to get Win10.

 

[odibrom]

The win10 key is MAC address dependent. Once you'll do the upgrade you can do a clean install from scratch. I've done it to my desktop (already dead, unfortunately) initially with win7 and my laptop, also with win7 initially. I've done several clean installs from scratch on my laptop at least 2 or 3 times already and have had no problems whatsoever, so I guess that if your PC is suitable for the upgrade, go for it.

I found a bit hard to get proper drivers for the USB3 ports, so before doing the upgrade, do get all required drivers first and save them in a secure folder at an external hard drive.

I found Speccy (freeware) pretty useful to get to know what hardware is installed and then get the proper drivers for win10, all of this BEFORE installing win10.

I suggested a laptop because of portability, whatever works for you...

 

[Santuzzo]

The win10 key is MAC address dependent. Once you'll do the upgrade you can do a clean install from scratch. I've done it to my desktop (already dead, unfortunately) initially with win7 and my laptop, also with win7 initially. I've done several clean installs from scratch on my laptop at least 2 or 3 times already and have had no problems whatsoever, so I guess that if your PC is suitable for the upgrade, go for it.

I found a bit hard to get proper drivers for the USB3 ports, so before doing the upgrade, do get all required drivers first and save them in a secure folder at an external hard drive.

I found Speccy (freeware) pretty useful to get to know what hardware is installed and then get the proper drivers for win10, all of this BEFORE installing win10.

I suggested a laptop because of portability, whatever works for you...

Thank you very much.
I will look into it how and if I can still get that free update.
Right now I need to make up my mind about whether or not to upgrade windows and whether or not to upgrade the PC, ie get a new PC.

 

[odibrom]

I'd get a new PC if the money is available, sooner or later you'll have to, unfortunately...

 

[Santuzzo]

I'd get a new PC if the money is available, sooner or later you'll have to, unfortunately...

Yes, I know, in PCs 10 years is ages...lol.
As of now my PC still does everything I need it to, so I'm not in a hurry, but it can't hurt to research what parts I want in a new PC.
I remember from building my current PC that the putting the parts together was much easier than I had expected, but getting all the information in order get the right parts took me a lot of time.

 

[odibrom]

(...) but getting all the information in order get the right parts took me a lot of time.

That's the old screw joke, a company's computer system went down so they called a specialist. The man came over, heard the company's CEO briefing and asked some questions about where is this and where is that and then he asked where was a certain box. He got sent there, opened the box, turned a screw a few times and suddenly, all computers were working in order. The CEO said, "woow", that's a fine job, how much for this? The specialist replied "1k, please". The CEO got mad at the reply, but was thankful for having the problem solved and said "Ok, but please I need a complete description in the invoice." The said, "ok, no problem" and the invoice said "tightening a screw - 1$, knowing what screw to tight 999$".... and I've heard this joke with different situations and jobs, but you get the point.

Yah, getting the right parts is hard, specially because once one decides, there's a new one around the corner which can make coffee with a drop of whatever in it...

 

[Santuzzo]

LOL, that's a good one

 

[Xaios]

The win10 key is MAC address dependent.

Not quite. If it's an OEM copy of Windows, the key will be bound to the motherboard upon installation. Some OEM PCs even have the Windows license stored in the UEFI, so the end-user never receives or interacts with a key at all. Only if it's a boxed retail copy of Windows will it not be hardware-bound... kind of. Microsoft still keeps track of the hardware associated with the build that the license is installed on, and if too many major changes occur, they can deactivate it. Most of the time it can be reactivated, but they keep their own counsel as to the circumstances in which they do or don't. It's completely nebulous, and that's exactly how they like it.

 

[odibrom]

Thanks for the correction @Xaios . I thought its key was linked to the MAC address, or so I was "instructed" to think by Microsoft's online help... nevertheless, @Santuzzo if your Win7 is "pure", I think you can upgrade to win10 without fuss, considering your PC is eligible for it.

 

[Santuzzo]

Thanks, guys!
My Win7 is "pure", bought it as an OEM version years ago. I saw that the free Win10 upgrade period is already long past, however supposedly there is still a way to get it, but I'm thinking I might keep this Win7 for now and when I decide to finally upgrade to Win10 I will probably purchase it.

Just to clarify: I have no complaints about my current Win7 at all, all I'm worried about is security issues once MS will discontinue security updates for Win7 in January 2020.

 

[Xaios]

My Win7 is "pure", bought it as an OEM version years ago.

Just so you're aware (and you probably figured it out, but it bears mentioning), your Windows 10 upgrade will be subject to the same OEM license restriction as your original Windows 7 license. It'll be tied to the motherboard. If you change that (and you'd need to in order to upgrade your computer in any meaningful way beyond a video card swap and/or SSD addition if you don't have one), you'll need a new license.

 

[Santuzzo]

Just so you're aware (and you probably figured it out, but it bears mentioning), your Windows 10 upgrade will be subject to the same OEM license restriction as your original Windows 7 license. It'll be tied to the motherboard. If you change that (and you'd need to in order to upgrade your computer in any meaningful way beyond a video card swap and/or SSD addition if you don't have one), you'll need a new license.

Thanks! yes, I was aware of that.

 

[TedEH]

your Windows 10 upgrade will be subject to the same OEM license restriction as your original Windows 7 license

I'm not sure how it works, but I've ended up with my license being tied to my MS account / email. Windows licensing seems so unclear. Much confusion.

 

[TedEH]

A more relevant comment though: I think that the requirements for Win 10 are less than that of 7, so the upgrade doesn't have to mean a hardware upgrade. If the hardware is doing everything you need it to do, I wouldn't rush into buying new stuff unless you really want to.

 

[Descent]

Personally I will stick to Win7 as long as I can. Win10 upgrade knocked off and killed my firewire drivers on my rehearsal room recording PC. It worked fine for about 6 months, here comes the "Creators Update" (should've called it Destroyers update) which as soon as it saw my home network it installed and slapped on as you can't stop Win10 messing with things in the background.
It is a disgusting OS that also does a lot of snooping, even though they added snooping features in Win7 and Win8 as well, thru the backdoor of updates.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/297...our-privacy-in-windows-10-piece-by-piece.html

I am not sure which direction I will be going once Win7 is dead, probably back to Mac. I think you can still buy a business PC that has Win7 and Win10 boot option, I've seen some still being sold, so that way when you are truly forced to upgrade you can.

... and yes, having an install that's legit Win7 you can just use the Media Creation tool which will upgrade you, I usually go for the DVDs and create a drive image using Acronis in case things break during install, which happens.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

[TedEH]

I dunno how far the "OS is snooping on you" argument can really go -> At this point, regardless of your OS, pretty much every piece of software is sending back some kind of analytics/telemetry that you can't do much about. Even more so with "apps" that exist mostly online to begin with. At this point, as soon as you touch a PC, something somewhere is tracking some aspect of what you're doing. I don't mean that to condone anything, but I think there's little point in trying to combat it via the OS choice at this point.

 

[Santuzzo]

A more relevant comment though: I think that the requirements for Win 10 are less than that of 7, so the upgrade doesn't have to mean a hardware upgrade. If the hardware is doing everything you need it to do, I wouldn't rush into buying new stuff unless you really want to.

Thanks! Yes, what you're saying makes sense. So far my PC has not cause me any issues in terms of hardware, so a hardware upgrade is probably not really necessary at this point. I might just upgrade the 6GB RAM to a bit more and leave it at that.
I was thinking 'omg, my PC build is about 10 years old, I MUST upgrade....' LOL

Personally I will stick to Win7 as long as I can. Win10 upgrade knocked off and killed my firewire drivers on my rehearsal room recording PC. It worked fine for about 6 months, here comes the "Creators Update" (should've called it Destroyers update) which as soon as it saw my home network it installed and slapped on as you can't stop Win10 messing with things in the background.
It is a disgusting OS that also does a lot of snooping, even though they added snooping features in Win7 and Win8 as well, thru the backdoor of updates.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/297...our-privacy-in-windows-10-piece-by-piece.html

I am not sure which direction I will be going once Win7 is dead, probably back to Mac. I think you can still buy a business PC that has Win7 and Win10 boot option, I've seen some still being sold, so that way when you are truly forced to upgrade you can.

... and yes, having an install that's legit Win7 you can just use the Media Creation tool which will upgrade you, I usually go for the DVDs and create a drive image using Acronis in case things break during install, which happens.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Thanks!
What I read about Win10 is that forced updates which supposedly can't be switched off completely. That would definitely annoy me.

 

[Descent]

Yep, forced updates that also break the hardware occasionally or roll over drivers.
In my case it destroyed my Boss interface drivers and had to reinstall - that fixed itself, but it locked my firewire controller and I just gave up on that, so I lost my 8 channel interface thanks to a Windows update.
Unfortunately wiping the system also puts me on the latest, so I'll have to look for a pirate copy of one before Creators update to see if it will recognize and fix the firewire drivers itself.
I rolled back to Win7 on that machine as well.

One thing we didn't mention is that you can wipe the drive and if you have a clean OS install put in Windows 7 from scratch, that way you'll make it run faster. Everything Windows the longer it works, the more "gunk" it develops so OS refresh is usually good thing.

As far as privacy - one way to do it stick a Firewall in learn mode where it asks you every time something tries to run on your OS, and you just block it. It will run in learn mode for a day or two but then after that you should be fine. I definitely recommend 3rd party firewall regardless of what you do on Windows. It is amazing to see all the garbage it tries to connect.

For Win10 also there is CCleaner which can remove the little parasitic store apps that come by default, like Candy Crush, News, Messaging, etc.