Basic first steps after Windows 10 Home upgrade?

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I’ve just had two desktops upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and will plug them in Friday. Despite assurances from the retail computer shop that all things such as email, shortcuts/favorites, photos and documents etc.  from our Windows 7 systems will be there, this amateur user compared to most here, is quite nervous.  I’m not sure what to expect given the many somewhat complex issues I’ve been reading about here just trying to do my homework.  May I ask what the first basic steps are I should take?  Before the upgrades I downloaded and saved a few basic programs in versions compatible with Win 10.

I would be very grateful if you technically astute users wouldn’t mind advising me, desperately hoping this won’t be traumatic.  Thank you in advance.

 

 

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The first things I would do are:

+ Make a full disk image and a separate data backup of each of the computers.
+ Before you go on line with the new computers: Go through the Settings App and adjust ALL the settings to achieve the privacy level you require/desire.
+ Read about how to control Windows Update on Win10 Home. You can start with AKB2000016 for basic information (read carefully), then read more about it in the threads on this site.
+ Be sure your third-party, previously installed software works.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Seff, WSClouddancer, Elly

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[Seff]

I went through a single desktop upgrade last weekend, with my second desktop also to be upgraded when I’m comfortable with how the first one is running. I experienced three major realisations following the first upgrade, and which may or may not assist @WSClouddancer:-

First, I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the actual upgrade went, after an earlier failed attempt which turned out to be down to historic GWX Control Panel anti-W10 settings despite having uninstalled that program. Once I reinstalled it and changed the settings to support an upgrade it all went smoothly and took a fraction over 2 hours.

Second, I was also pleasantly surprised at how familiar the resulting W10 desktop looked. Sure, drilling into the system produced some different displays, largely intuitive and smarter looking than under W7, if a little difficult to find on occasion, but the overall impression was one of delight that there were no tiles or other tablet-style displays to fathom out a way round, and no need to investigate installing “Classic Shell” or whatever it is that makes it look more like W7. Maybe this was down to W10 being an upgrade rather than a clean install, I don’t know.

Third, however, I was – and to a degree remain – somewhat confused by the switch from MSE with its daily scans and constant updates to Windows Defender which appears to be based almost entirely around running protection in the background with unpredictability about scans and updates, it seems to place much less reliance on them than I am used to. Although I changed the time of the supposed daily scans to an hour when the machine is actually on, it doesn’t seem in practice to have happened according to the information on the Windows Security page and the Notifications pop-up. They only seem to show the odd manual update or scan I’ve run but which seemingly I don’t actually need to do under Defender’s system anyway. Maybe it’s working as intended, but if so it’s sufficiently different to how other AV programs operate to cause me still to feel a little bit discombobulated by it!

On the whole I’m pleasantly surprised by W10, as my local repair shop told me I would be when they said last year that while the time wasn’t then right to make the change I shouldn’t be afraid of doing so when the time came.

All I need to do now is scour my bookcase and dust down that book my son gave me a couple of Christmases ago about Windows 10 for Dummies and see what sense I can make of it! Or is a new edition about to come out in the light of version 1909?

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Seff.

2 users thanked author for this post.

rick41, Elly

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Thank you so much, very interesting and I appreciate very much.

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https://www.ghacks.net/2019/08/08/basic-things-to-do-after-a-clean-install-of-windows-10/

I thought this might be helpful as well.

I would also recommend using O & O Shutup10

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

2 users thanked author for this post.

Seff, WSClouddancer

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Thank you, very reassuring too know and I will look into it.

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Most info in an old Windows 10 book will still apply.  If a setting has been moved, the control panel and settings app and start menu all have a search function which if you type the name of what you are looking for should find it.  A few changes – a dark mode and a night light feature now exist.  Once you needed to have a Microsoft account to install items from the store, now you can install them without.  It may be harder to set up a local account instead of a Microsoft account – disconnecting from the internet during account setup may help.

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Seff

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another thing to do after upgrading from Win7 to Win10 is to disable Fast Startup

https://www.howtogeek.com/243901/the-pros-and-cons-of-windows-10s-fast-startup-mode/

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r1ma

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So months ago I too upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10. The only major problem I had (and still do have) is my original MS Office Pro 2013 now needs a Product Activation Key number. I went through all my CD installation discs but could not find my disc. I then called my company that set up this system that had Win 7 and they too did not have any Product Activation Key number. So, whenever I use anything MS, I get a screen that starts with my computer telling me to enter the PAK. I have now gone to Libre Office for Word and Excel. However, I still must use Outlook, but it has this annoying giant red stripe across the top of the screen that politely (sic) reminds me that my Product Activation Has Failed.  Is there any way to find/access (no pun intended) to get my PAK from the original MS Office 2013?

 

Thank you, InPlaceMike

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If you still have the ability to boot from the Win 7 drive, or maybe even with your current Win 10, you should be able to recover the registration key with downloadable software.  I had to do this with a friends Office 2010 years ago and another friends Win 8.1 that he forgot the logon password.  Both times, I found free software online to do the trick.

Simply Google “lost office 2013 activation key” or something like that and see what comes up.  But – be SUPER leery when installing them as they’ll usually come with ‘free’ bloatware that you DO NOT NEED.  Be sure to un-check or reply NO to all bloatware offerings.  Then remove the recovery software when done.

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To anonymous inplacemike – you say you upgraded.  If you did an in place upgrade and office was installed before, it should have stayed activated and worked.  It sounds like it did not.

If you have a backup of everything from when it worked, you could backup again to a different disk, restore the working office backup, and run a keyfinder utility to find the key.  Then restore the new backup.

Without a backup, did your computer come preloaded with Office, and if you restored the factory image from the restore partition do you think it would come back?  Feels unlikely, if you even kept the restore disks or restore partition.  So I can’t think of anything that would help.  There are other email clients like Mail and Outlook.com, and Outlook for your Android or Iphone/ipad tablet or phone is free with ads I think.

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Thank you all for replying. In the early days after upgrading I did what was suggested and went to Google in search of an answer. There were a bunch of “suggestions ranging from going into places on my computer I just don’t know enough about to others showing Products Activation Keys that they guarantee to work. I tried one or two of them and then was advised but those who know much more about computers than I do and was told to NOT even try using those numbers from others. I will (with caution) try again, the suggestions you all-in-the-know people have offered me.

Once again, thank you so much for replying so quickly.

InPlaceMike

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As I read through the replies, I’m not sure you used a product key recovery program. If you upgraded from Windows 7 to W10… not a clean install where your previous data was wiped… you should be able to run one of the programs and retrieve keys for any Microsoft product keys that may be in your system.

MajorGeeks has mal-ware free downloads. There is a page of software related to Product Key recovery.

I’ve had success trying ProduKey and WinKey Finder. Ideally you should recover the keys before upgrading, just in case… but sometimes my friends and family upgraded, and then brought me the hardware to fix…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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