Upgrade to Windows 10

[jeobsplyr]

Hello Community, I would like to know if my PC ( HP Pavilion a6745f ) is capable fo running Windows 10?  I'm currently running Windows 7 Home ( upgraded from pre-installed Windows Vista ).  Once Microsoft discontinues support for Windows 7, I'm looking to "try" upgrading to Windows 10, either by purchasing Windows 10 installation disc or download.  I'm not really financially able to purchase a new PC with Windows 10 installed.  So, is this a workable solution on this particular machine?  It's in great working condition, and I have made some additions to it, 250GB SSD (system), 1TB HDD (secondary, installed), and a 500GB external drive, 6GB DDR RAM  Any feedback would be appreciated.

[WAWood]

@jeobsplyr 

My guess, since this is a Vista-era PC, is that it will NOT handle an Upgrade to Win10 well.

I wish there was some way to tell precisely, but while Microsoft has released this tool to check your hardware and software for compatibility, they have not updated it in some time, and there is no way of knowing if it checks for Win10 v1903, or even Win10 v1809: http://www.intowindows.com/download-windows-10-upgrade-advisor/

You need to realize, that tool will only find hardware and software that is KNOWN to NOT WORK with Win10. The more serious problem is that if you have specialized hardware (like switchable graphics), you will need drivers from the OEM for Win10 to get full usage of your hardware, and if HP does not provide Win10 drivers for your PC, you will be in serious trouble.

So, the risk is that, after the Upgrade, your PC does not work properly, and even though MS tells you that you can easily revert back to your former OS, in reality, that often does not work and corrupts the OS in the process.

If that is not ENOUGH, the Win10 Feature Upgrades (of which one will be released shortly) not only tend to take a LOT of space on your drive (e.g., ~20GB or so), they also have a nasty habit of failing and leaving you with a corrupted PC.

That said, Win10 1903 is not going to be released for a while (I would NOT force an upgrade to 1809 at this point!), so if you want to be SAFE, I would strongly suggest that you follow the instructions below to make an Image Backup of your PC to a large USB stick or an external drive. That way, if the Upgrade is forced on you and it corrupts your PC, you will have something to restore your PC FROM.

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I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.

[Easysay]

How did i move to Windows 10 from Windows 7? reinstall the old Window 7, then uninstall a Windows 10 OS.

[jeobsplyr]

I do appreciate you taking the time to read and respond to my question. You seem to be very knowledgeable on the ,. But, would it be possible to do a "clean install" of Windows 10, after a complete format of the primary drive, using a current Windows 10 installation disk? I did do the "free upgrade" on my laptop when it was being offered. The program ran well, except, I didn't have wi-fi access. But, I did locate a compatible driver, online for the system. Unfortunately, this was after I was completely frustrated and reverted back to Win7. Am I looking at this the right way? Maybe looking at the specs on the model of the PC I have might be helpful. It is an HP Pavilion Special Edition a6745f. And it did come with Vista 64bit installed. I purchased Win7, and installed that. Here is the link to the specs: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01625611. Thanks so much.

[jjc1 · Accepted solution]

I, too, have a Windows Vista PC that I upgraded to Windows 7 and then upgraded to Windows 10 when the first Windows 10 came out.  I have had no problems updating so far.   Here are the specs of my PC.  It is a HP PC and has a 500G hard drive.

[jeobsplyr]

Hey, thanks for the response! I didn't think I'd have much of a problem getting Windows 10 installed and working. I guess I had heard so much negativity on the Net about Windows 10 not working on older PCs. Well, I'm here to say, that, it works and has updated to the current version! Hope this helps someone else whose looking to use a perfectly good PC, even if it's an older one, to use with Windows 10. Let's be real here, everyone can't just go out and get a new PC running Windows 10. I can't! If I can keep this one running well.....hey....I'm good! Peace!!

[Grzwacz]

Greetings,

Welcome back to the forum.

I am not a HP employee.

A HP PC running Windows Vista will probably not have Windows 10 driver support.

You can try a Windows 10 (W10 ) upgrade at this Microsoft site(Link).

No guarantee on the result.

I would use a different HDD or SSD when trying the W10 update.

Now you would need to copy or clone the existing W7 disk image to this different HDD or SSD.

Instructions on how to do this can be reviewed at this site (Link).

Trying the W10 update on a cloned HDD will keep your existing W7 disk intact if you have a bad W10 update experience.

Regards

[jeobsplyr]

Thanks for the response. But, as I said earlier, my PC is running just fine after upgrading to Windows 10. As a matter of fact I did swap out my Windows 7 HDD for a new SSD. I also was able to get updated drivers for software and peripherals. So, everything is A-Ok, now. Keep up the good work!!