HP Pavillion DV6 Laptop compatibility with windows 10

[Ruggy51]

When windows 10 first became available i downloaded it from Microsoft.  My computer worked fine for a short time and then would not open.  I gave it to a friend that can get around computers and he reloaded windows 7 and it seems ok.  I checked later for compatibility and found my laptop was not compatible.  is that still true and can i do something to make it compatible?  I am looking at a new HP ENVY 17t-cvg000 laptop since security is an issue continuing to use Windows 7.

[banhien]

@Ruggy51 

Please try

        https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-compatibility-checker/

Regards.

[WAWood]

@Ruggy51 

Microsoft seriously changes Windows 10 every six months, and with each new version, demands more and more of the hardware to make it work.  This has been evident over time when Win7-era PCs originally upgraded to Win10 without issues but folks trying to upgrade the same PCs years later ran into compatibility issues.

I don't personally trust any MS Compatibility Tool -- as I ran that on my DV6 laptop and was also told it was not compatible with Win10.  But I ignored that, did the upgrade anyway, and have been happily using Win 10 on the laptop for years now -- it even runs Win10 v20H2 build 804 (the very latest released build) without issues.

But, there was some work involved in getting Win10 installed and working on it -- so my advise is to read the article I wrote below to do the prep needed for your upgrade:

HP laptops, especially the older Win7 machines, often came with two different graphics chips -- and Intel and then, either an AMD or Nvidia. This was known as Switchable Graphics or Hybrid Graphics. You ran using the Intel chip most of the time, but when you needed extra graphics power, like in Gaming, the PC automatically switched over to using the AMD or Nvidia graphics chip.

Problem is, this requires special graphics drivers to work, and while those came preinstalled on the Win7 laptops, those drivers simply do not exist for Win10. Those drivers are not available from Intel, AMD, or Nvidia. A way to tell if your PC has two different graphics chips is to look in Device Manager under Display Adapters.

IMPORTANT Warning: If there are two different display adapters listed, one Intel and one AMD/Nividia, then you have this problem -- and if you force an upgrade to Win10, you will have serious graphics problems and your machine will not work.

However, if you do not have this problem, to CAN upgrade to Win10, but you must be prepared to do four things:

1) Make a complete image backup to external drive or large capacity USB stick,
2) Make changes to the reserved system partitioning scheme on your hard drive,
3) Use a different approach than Windows Update to do the Upgrade,
4) Be prepared to do a clean-install, if the Upgrade does not work.

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1: Image Backup:
This is VITAL because the machine is likely to fail the upgrade, and when it does, you will learn that the Win10 GoBack function is NOT reliable, and that can leave you with a corrupted machine that will require factory reset, and losing everything on it, to get it working again.

You avoid this by making an image backup to an external drive or USB stick using Macrium Reflect (MR) which 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)
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

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.
---------------------------------
2: System Reserved Resizing:
There is a small partition on the hard drive of Win7 preinstalled machines known as System Reserved. This holds something known as the boot loader code. It is 100MB in size -- all that is needed for Win7. But Win10 needs 350MB, and, in some cases, is NOT able to resize this on its own. IF that happens, you have to manually use a partitioning tool to resize it yourself.
---------------------------------
3: Use a different Upgrade approach:
Windows Update is the easiest, but least reliable, way to do the Win10 Upgrade. A much better, and more reliable way, is to use the Microsoft Media Creation Tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

In my case, I created Win10 install media on USB, inserted that, and tried to do the Upgrade while still in Win7. That failed -- miserably!!

So, I ended up having to Restore my PC to Win7 (using the MR backup I had made prior to the Upgrade), and follow the details in step 4 -- and that worked!
---------------------------------
4: Prepare for clean-install:
If you do all this, and after the upgrade, your PC is only partially functioning, that means that the Upgrade did not go well and stuff is still there from the prior OS corrupting the functionality of Win10.

You MIGHT be able to fix this by doing a clean-install of Win10. Problem is that a clean-install often does not recognize the prior activation, even though it should.

So, BEFORE you do the upgrade, follow these instructions from the community Win10 forums about creating a genuineticket.xml file: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/23354-clean-install-windows-10-directly-without-having-upgrade-fi...

You will need this later to activate your Win10 pc after the clean-install.

NOTE: I did the clean-install, and even though the product-key was SUPPOSED to work to activate Win10, it did not. And, calls to MS about this were wastes of time -- since the MS idiots said I could not activate Win10 with a Win7 product key!!

What DID work was using the genuineticket approach documented in the tenforums thread. I copied that from the USB stick where I saved it, rebooted, and after that, my DV6 was activated.

[Prométhée]

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@Ruggy51 wrote:

When windows 10 first became available i downloaded it from Microsoft.  My computer worked fine for a short time and then would not open.  I gave it to a friend that can get around computers and he reloaded windows 7 and it seems ok.  I checked later for compatibility and found my laptop was not compatible.  is that still true and can i do something to make it compatible?  I am looking at a new HP ENVY 17t-cvg000 laptop since security is an issue continuing to use Windows 7.

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Hello
it would be necessary to know the exact model of the computer!
But to answer the question, you have already had the experience!
Maybe you've had some trouble with new windows upgrades.
But in terms of making the computer compatible, this is most likely not possible.
Since components would have to be replaced, an older computer may indeed run Windows 10, but it is not suitable for the recommended configuration.
all you can do is possibly add more memory, but for the rest there is certainly not much to do
Try what you have been told, but since you want to change your computer, do it!
Keep this one in order to use your old programs if necessary which worked with windows 7
If you no longer use it too much for the internet, security concerns are not too important, with a good antivirus

we need the exact model of your computer, and the product number
and for a laptop:

HP Notebook PCs - How Do I Find My Product Name or Number? | HP® Customer Support