Can I use z840's Windows 10 recovery disk on z800 to upgrade the existing Windows 7 Pro?

[tanpin2]

Hi all,

I'm opening a new thread on the possibility to use z840's Windows 10 recovery disk on older z800. The purpose is to upgrade the existing z800's Windows 7 to Windows 10 as a lot of recent applications now only works on Windows 10. On HP website there's no option to choose Windows 10 as OS in the software and drivers page.

Appreciate your feedback and help. Thanks

Bests,

Pin

[SDH · Accepted solution]

A recovery disc for another workstation generally won't have the drivers you need to run an older workstation through the process of a functional W10 install.  I find it best to do the W10 install atop a cleaned up W7Pro64 install.

W7Pro64 will still free-upgrade to W10Pro-64.  Here is how I do that.  The key is that once you upgrade the workstation to W10Pro64 your UUID (firmware coded in your BIOS) gets registered with the MS W10 certification servers and you can do clean installs from that point forward with no need for a pre-installed W7, or any serial numbers.  A tip:  on future clean installs during the process early on if it asks for your W10 serial number just answer you don't have it.  It will go find you in the W10 servers shortly thereafter.

On these upgrades I always plan on doing a full clean install once the box is W10 registered automatically during the W7-W10 upgrade.  I go to the easy to find MS W10 installer site to download the thumb drive installer, and choose the option to be able to upgrade on more than that one type of workstation, get the thumb drive ready (16GB size now IIRC), boot up the workstation into W7Pro64, do all updates for W7Pro64, get it all cleaned of unnecessary stuff,  do disk cleanup, now insert the thumb drive, don't boot from the thumb drive but rather navigate to the thumb drive while in W7Pro64, and navigate into the setup.exe there on the thumb drive.  Run it as an admin.  Launch that while connected to the net because MS/HP have worked together so that by now they have the correct drivers ready for you to receive over the net for a pretty good W10Pro64 load.

In this process you can choose to "save nothing" which is what I do.  Or, choose the other option to save what you can from your old install.  I think that second option gets you a bit of a mishmash.

Regardless, at the end of the whole process you can do a full clean install booting off the thumb drive that time and get a very good install.  This all works so well because MS and HP are working together to make it so.

[DGroves]

the main issue with using a z840 recovery disk on a z800 is as "SDH" pointed out the drivers, in particular the RSTe driver

on the z840 it's 4.7.xxxx which no longer has support for the z800/z820 c600/c602 chipset 4.6.xxx was the last ver for the z800/820 and this driver is important as it activates the 5 "SCU" sata ports next to the 2 blue ones on the z820 (same for the z800) the onboard LSI 160E chip also requires a driver during setup (although after install win 10 will find/use it's built in driver)

i recommend you download the MS win 10 pro x64 ISO image (not usb) and then use a program like NTLite to intergrate all nessary MS updates and HP z8xx drivers into a new ISO image

https://www.ntlite.com/download/

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

I made a early ISO for "SDH" quite a while back, and since that time have refined the process to where my new HP z8xx install ISO is not much larger than the Official MS ISO and it cleanly installs all required drivers during the setup/post install phase except for the Intel remote access program, which i only install manually if the application is required

[tanpin2]

Thanks both for the reply and help!
I've installed the original Win7 on it and just downloaded the MS win 10 pro x64 ISO image. Will proceed with recommended procedure.
Wish everyone a nice day/weekend ahead.

[SDH]

Please keep us updated.  I can confirm that DGroves has the knowledge and skills to create an installer for W10 with the updated drivers included, hand tuned by an expert to create a single package that does a proper W10Pro64 install on an older workstation.  Why can't HP?  Surely they could subcontract with him and purchase an installer for workstation x/y/z.

It is not fair to expect DGroves to provide each of us individually with a hand tuned installer that works perfectly.  The one he made for me to test was excellent.  I believe that the current HP/MS installer process will work quite well, but there is room for improvement, and why not present these options in a new downloadable section in the forum here?  HP... could you go along with that?

[tanpin2]

Hi both,

This my latest update:
I didn't use the z840 recovery disk, nor did I follow 100% the method DGroves mentioned. My manager prefer to have all the driver and software installed separately (some crucial one requires local domain administrator's permission). As per mentioned earlier, the workstation has a fresh installation of Win7Pro using its own recovery disk, and then upgraded it with Win10 Pro iso downloaded from MS. Everything works fine up until now.
Thanks

Bests,
Pin

[DGroves]

whatever floats your boat, ie- how you do the install/upgrade is up to you

i would like to point out however that any ms security updates or driver updates slipstreamed into a install image will always be installed  because the initial win 10 setup/install always runs with admin rights perhaps you are confusing integrated drivers with the procedure a domain user logging on the first time may experience as any server side scripts execute

also a question, if you do have domain/local user permissions active how did you do the win 7 to 10 upgrade? most admins prevent things like this

[tanpin2]

Hi DGroves,

Win 7 Pro was installed freshly on the workstation using its original recovery disk. Win10 Pro was then downloaded and installed using local admin account. Once the upgrade done, IT helped to integrate the workstation into company domain and from then only I proceed to software and drivers installation.

[DGroves]

thanks for the update, it appears some of your software requires elevated privileges to run hope you like the win 10 update