Windows 10: Downloading the Windows 10 Upgrade

I clicked on the windows 10 upgrade button (Get Windows 10) that appeared in my task bar. The upgrade screen came up and tells me it is "Starting download... Once download is complete, you can start the upgrade, or schedule it for later". I feel that the system is in some kind of continuous loop as nothing has happened for two hours. I have a fast wireless connection and did not have this problem when i upgraded my desktop to Windows 10 several months ago. My friends laptop is rather old, a Toshiba NB305-N600 with windows 7 currently installed. Although the PC tells me it is compatible with Windows 10, I have my doubts. Should I try and install using a thumb drive instead? I don't want to do a clean install as the machine has a lot of my clients data that needs to be saved. Any recommendations would be great.

:)

 

Windows10 upgrade

 

Missing Operating System after Windows 10 download

Is there anywhere to download replacement OS for Windows 7 Home Premium? Mine crashed on Windows 10 upgrade.

 

Hi it's a 3.8Gb or so download, and if you maybe have a slower connection I recommend (and recommend anyway) not to also select to apply updates at the same time.

My preferred procedure is:
a. Create (or update) a disk image of what you have BEFORE commencing the upgrade.
Why? Sometimes things go wrong, PC becomes unbootable, people lose desktop data etc...
(You should be using diskimaging routinely to back up your system - there are so many advantages.
Sometimes the install fails 'cos of a program you have installed on the system.

b. Download the and create the bootable Win 10 install medium
Why? So you can retry installing or install on another PC as well, and if the download fails you can try that again.
And so you can use the bootable Win 10 install medium for repairs, including the in-place install repair upgrade (instructions in the Tutorial section).

c. Uninstall any AV and GUI/theme mods and upgrade - without updates initially.
Note that you may experience issues with drivers, and Win 10 has its own particular vulnerabilities.
Consider using a start menu such as Classic Shell that properly renders a traditional start menu (Win10's doesn't).

First I would wait 'long enough' - check for disk activity.
Then if it really is stuck you will have to hope you can boot it again. That would be uncertain.

And of course you should always always back up (anyway) and particularly before a major change such as this.

Hopefully the data is on a separate partition. If it's on C: and you don't have a backup, you might wish to consider taking the disk out of the laptop when you can, putting it in a case and connecting it to another PC and backing up the data, or creating a disk image anyway using a program like Macrium Reflect Free, its bootable medium, external backup storage, and booting from Macrium's boot medium.

Since this is a netbook, you might experience problems with storage (Windows.old is created - a backup of most of your current Windows folder), the smaller screen - some have had problems with small format displays - so regard the upgrade as a trial. Hence I re-emphasise the need to do a disk image beforehand to ensure you can restore Win 7 - as well of course as the normal restore option within 30 days.

 

@dalchina, thank you for your expert advice. I will certainly make backups of all data I believe that my friend will want to retain. Having said that, I am still wondering do you think that this little netbook with the Atom processor will be able to handle Windows 10? As mentioned in my earlier post the machine in question is a Toshiba NB300-N600 currently running Windows 7. I certainly do appreciate your feedback, thank you so much.

 

An obvious issue is that there don't seem to be Win 10 drivers from Toshiba:
NB305-N600 | Toshiba Drivers Downloads | Satellite, Satellite Pro, Portege, Equium, Qosmio, Tecra, Libretto Notebook

That doesn't necessarily mean it's not capable of running Win 10 on that basis alone- My HPG60 214EM came to be with 32 bit Vista, and ended up with 64 bit Win 10- no Win 10 drivers from HP.

1Gb RAM is specified as min for Win 10 32 bits. Expect that to limit the number of browser tabs you have open.
I assume it's 32 bits.

The processor must satisfy the requirements for running Win 10:
Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2

Microsoft offers a handy primer on what these mean.

• PAE gives 32-bit processors the ability to use more than 4 GB of physical memory on capable versions of Windows, and is a prerequisite for NX.
• NX helps your processor guard the PC from attacks by malicious software.
• SSE2 is a standard instruction set on processors that is increasingly used by third-party apps and drivers.

There's more technical information on these features here.

 

Thank you for your expeditious reply. Understand what you are getting at here. I am currently attempting to download the update...will wait a bit longer. Getting late here so will consider copying all of the files (photos etc) to a thumb drive tomorrow. Then I'll follow your instructions from your initial post. I'll post back and update. Again, thank you. Cheers & beers!

 

@dalchina, Through my continued research, with your guidance of course, I learned that the Atom Processor installed in this particular machine will not support Windows 10. The Atom N550 Proc has Instruction Set Extensions for SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3...no support for PAE which seems to be a prerequisite for Windows 8.1 & Windows 10. I've decided to tell my buddy that he needs to upgrade his hardware, i.e. New Laptop...forget the Netbook. I bought a Netbook myself back around when this machine came out, loaded with XP I believe. It was okay, but soon became very minimal (slow) and i found that i was unable to do many things that i wanted to do. I still have it...loaded Ubuntu 12.4 onto the machine. Doesn't excite me much anymore. Anyway, thanks so much for leading me in the proper directions for study. PC software and hardware has just become my hobby for the last 20 years or so...I enjoy it very much. Cheers and Beers! I see that you are located in GB...would like to visit some day.

 

Hi, glad that helped a bit. Sometimes software used to identify processor characteristics doesn't tell you this clearly as I discovered in trying to check this on one laptop. I do seem to recall I thought Win 10 was supposed to check on this before installing.

Really, unless there's a clear need to upgrade, just leave the Netbook as is provided it's stable. I bought one second hand purely for travelling abroad on holiday, being all too aware of the burden of a normal laptop, a good decision. Win 7 starter of course. Also gives me a backup should my main laptop fail.

Make sure you have a disk image of it; if it gets infected by ransomware for example, as Win 7 security gets out of date, you can just restore the image.

You're welcome to call in - I'm in the Midlands - it's a while since I met anyone from Japan.