Z420 (WM521ET#ABZ) Upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10

[GSH6812]

Hi there,

I was sent an email by Microsoft telling me that they will no longer be supporting Windows 7 in 2020 and so I need to consider either running an unpatched Win 7 or upgrading to Windows 10 in due course.

Because of this I wanted to ask the community if they had managed to do this to a machine they own and whether I might experience any problems while doing this myself. I have tried to list the questions below.

1. Are drivers for Windows 10 available from HP for the Z420 so you can physically run the OS without problems?

2. My preferred upgrade path would be to simply purchase a new SSD, and then mount the HD as primary and install the OS as if it were a new machine. I would simply make the current HD (currently running Win 7) a slave or secondary drive.

Whilst attempting to see if this question had been raised before I found this thread, where another user had listed some configurations for drivers that needed to be installed. Did this list get finalized? I also found the following this thread that talked about some issues with upgrading the bios. The bios is something that I need to understand better.

Perhaps because I am simply going to be installing Windows 10 as a completely clean install then the bios issues will not come up but I would be happy to hear any feedback you can give so I can attempt to plan the migration of my amazing Z420 without wanting to shoot myself in the process.

Thanks

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

in general, the MS win 10 usb install key will install without any issues the only things you might want to get before doing the install is updated win 10 compatible drivers for the devices listed below

Intel RSTe driver 4.7.xx (do not use ver 3.x.x as they are not win 10 compatible)

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28890/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-enterprise-Intel-RSTe...

latest video driver from amd/nvidia

latest Realtek win 10 audio driver

or you can download the HP z440 win 10 enterprise driver pack as 99% of the 440 drivers are compatible with the 420 only a few drivers like the Intel AMT driver are model specific and will not work on a z420

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_Driverpack_Matrix_x64.html

using the "ntlight" program, will allow you to create a win install disk with all necessary drivers slipstreamed into the setup/install of win 10

https://www.ntlite.com/

[GSH6812]

A heroic contribution. Many thanks for this.