Well, MS has changed the rules on me. What I said above in reply 24 WAS true.

But I just got upgraded to the latest release of Win10, and found this out.

Note

• Starting with the November Update, Windows 10 (Version 1511) can be activated using some Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 product keys. For more info, see the section Activating Windows 10 (Version 1511 or higher) using a Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 product key in this topic.

Link to article:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/activation-in-windows-10 

the november update (threshold 2) allows people to clean install (w/o upgrading 1st) with a win 7/8 key. or at least that's the theory... hence my comment

(hey.. could have sworn i didn't see your reply there XD)

ps... supposedly win10 newcomers (that is.. those who upgraded before threshold 2 came out)  won't get threshold 2 until 30 days (or was it 31?) after their upgrade (as it'll wipe their restore to win 7->8 thingy)... and getting threshold 2 will reset certain settings, maybe even revert some drivers to default ms ones.....

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/14/make-sure-to-check-default-apps-and-settings-after-the-recent-windows-10-update/

i'll have to go through a clean install soon.... fingers crossed.

I have Win 8.1 and I book marked the link from how-to-geek about dual booting with Win 10 and 8.1. It seems pretty straight forward but my concern is will Win 10 interfere or break anything on 8.1 even though its on a separate partition. Considering all the nonsense with the new OS I've come not to trust MS at all. Another concern are the drivers. All of mine have been updated to the newest versions from the mfr's website. They're all pretty much generic, no fancy nVidia or any of that stuff. If Win 10 imports its own its could screw things up royally. Good thing I got plenty of backups, redundancy is a good thing. 

Dual, Triple boot, nah. You guys have recognized that Hyper-V ist built in since 8 ?

I have a new, larger, SSD on the way. The old 128Gb SSD just wasn't big enough, I had to store a lot of stuff on another drive.

Once I've got the boot media on a USB I'll be clean installing W10 to the new drive

Windows 10 update today......there were actually some GUI changes. I'm glad they held off on WB 10 because the OS is obviously still being tweaked.

128 is a bit small. I have a 256 GB SSD on this lappy and I still have to be careful not to install to much crap.

There shouldn't be any reason to be unclear about the revenue stream. Yes MS gave Windows 10 upgrades away for free, but only to people running Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. If you had Vista or XP then you were out of luck. If you had Linux or OSX, then you didn't get it for free.

Android, iOS and some form of yet to be deployed cloud computing (wirelessly attach a keyboard, mouse and monitor/tv/vr display to your cloud watch and then it streams everything to the servers, including 4k/8k games) are threats to windows in the future. However, older versions of windows are the biggest current obstacles for Microsoft moving forward and innovating so it can compete with those other platforms. According to the July 2014 Steam Survey, Windows 7 64 bit was on 49.92% of Steam computers, and this is two years after Windows 8 had came out.

Even with the October 2015 Steam Survey you get

Windows 7 64bit - 36.67%

Windows 7 32bit - 8.19%

Windows XP 32bit - 2.26%

Despite the free upgrade and Microsoft pushing hard windows 10 64bit is only 26.42% (windows 10 32bit is 1%)

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTQwNzM1MzEyMHFVRXF1Z0pSUUZfMV8yX2wuanBn

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

It will only help Microsoft by upgrading every possible computer to windows 10, especially when it can help leverage its windows 10 user base to get developers to create Windows 10 universal Apps which will run on PCs Windows 10 phones and even the Xbox One. Just this week, windows 10 had it's fall upgrade, the Xbox One upgraded to the New Xbox One Experience, which means a new UI and Windows 10 on the Xbox (giving MS another 10+ million windows 10 devices) and Windows 10 mobile will launch in the next month. I think Microsoft gave up between 500 million to 2 billion in upgrade revenue to push the windows ecosystem forward.

Though Microsoft also shot itself in the foot with the privacy options and lack of update notes. I use Windows 10 and think it is a better OS than 8.1 or 7 and I get what Microsoft is trying to do, but they really hurt themselves with those two things. Besides those two complains all I hear is that some older hardware may give people trouble and then the media center faithful are highly upset about not having an upgrade path on windows 10.

Quoting c242, reply 29

Dual, Triple boot, nah. You guys have recognized that Hyper-V ist built in since 8 ?

A VM isn't QUITE the same as a full install, IMHO, YMMV.

I installed a 240 in my Dell lappy, removed the optical drive, and added a HDD caddy with a 1 TB HDD, so I have all the room I need.

I have not yet upgraded from W7 to W10.  One thing for sure, I don't have time for a clean install and then reinstalling all my software unless I want to spend a few hours a day for a couple of weeks.  I wish there was a program that really did clean an installed system as those registry cleaners purport to do.  My experience is they clean up plenty they shouldn't be touching resulting in having to reinstall software anyway.  Even CCleaner (some version back) deleted all my restore points.

I tried Windows 10 but no win 10 drivers were available for my laptop at HP website. So it started to heat upto 65-70°C when idle. I switched back to Win 7 now its fine. 

According to what you said, that Win10 does not replace your old key and the old key is still usable, there is nothing illegal about retaining the original Winx partition and dual-booting to the new Win10 partition. I haven't had anyone clarify that for me before. So thanks!

If you're willing to try it again - and I understand if you aren't - many recommend the Win8.x drivers if the mfr hasn't released Win10 drivers. Good luck!

If you're looking at buying another HD/SSD anyway, why not install it as a 2nd drive and have the Win10 upgrade install there? You'll have dual-boot and can revert at any time, migrating your programs over as you wish. Just a thought.

Thx for the info. coquegsm

Quoting Fuzzy, reply 30

I have a new, larger, SSD on the way. The old 128Gb SSD just wasn't big enough, I had to store a lot of stuff on another drive.

Once I've got the boot media on a USB I'll be clean installing W10 to the new drive

That's exactly what I did. Clean install on a brand new 256gb SSD on a four year old Toshiba Qosmio X505 i7 18.4 inch gaming laptop rig. A lot said it could not be done at the time but it worked a charm for me. Fully activated and no issues with any hardware or software compatibility. I like 10. Speedier and snappier than 8 and 7. Just waiting for Edge to catch up with the other browsers on the block and I'll be a very happy camper. 

Leo, did you ever upgrade that rig to 10 before the clean install?

Otherwise, it shouldn't have activated, according to MS.

If you have 7 or 8 and you are using the 'free' upgrade version of W10, W10 has to be activated on the machine first before you can do a clean install.

The new drive is a 500Gb SSD. The 128Gb SSD is quite a few years old and was almost top of the range when new. Realistically it was never big enough for my os, programs and documents. I have 110Gb of photos...

Once you start loading FSX up with all the scenery add-ons, that takes a fair bit of space too

No doubt in a few years the 500Gb will be creaking at the seams.

Didn't that change with the recent Win10 update? Thought you could now do a fresh install of Win10 using your Windows 7/8 License key.

yes. as mentioned before (top of this page). threshold 2 allows people to clean install with win 7/8 keys.

... i wonder how that'll go when i try to do a clean install on my new machine (whenever it arrives). might end up having to phone ms or something

If you have a 64 bit OS then downloading both 32 bit and 64 bit, like the dl page suggests, would be a waste. Unles, of course, you have both. One's enough. Lol  

You can now, but that just started.

RND.........Nope, first time clean install on brand new drive. And yes you are right, according to Microsoft I should have not been able to do that but it did and was it successfully activated. 

system should be arriving today, got question regarding drivers. should i let win 10 find/update drivers or go d/l them myself?

If the drivers are nVidia don't let Win 10 upgrade them. Go to the website and dl the ones you need.