Windows 10: New Installation that is almost an Upgrade - Cheat Upgrade!

I just want to share what I did when I couldn't do an upgrade but didn't want to re-install 1000 programs and re-configure everything:

Clone your old Windows 8 disk (or Windows 7).
Install fresh copy of Win10 on the new drive, but without wiping the disk first.
Call your new user "Temporary" or something similar during setup. You'll only use it briefly before you are back with your old user from the previous version of Windows.
Log out from normal user and log in as local Administrator.

Copy over Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData and your old User profile from the old Windows disk, to their respective location.

Set up a new User account with the same user name as you had before.
Log in as this user. A new profile will be created. Log out again and in as Admin.
Delete the newly created user file for your preferred user account.
Go into the registry and locate the Profilelist key (this is documented elsewhere). Point the profile to your old User folder which you copied over to the new installation. Log out from the Admin account and try logging in as your old user. This may not work the first time. Windows may either just ignore the command or give an error message. But don't panic. It can absolutely work, you just have to gradually copy the content of the Appdata folder one folder at a time. Go back to the User folder that Windows had just created for that user - the generic profile. Start by replacing everything apart from the AppData folder and check that you can log in. Should be fine. Then replace folder by folder starting with the LowLocal, then Roaming and finally Local which is the trickiest. The folder that's most likely to create problems is the Microsoft folder in the Local folder in Appdata. The more you an copy over from your old user profile the more work you save yourself with the installation and configuration of Windows.

Eventually you will be able to log in with that account, using your old profile. A lot of things will look familiar if you had customised your old profiles.

Also, the programs that you copied over will be indexed by Windows 10. A surprisingly large number of them will stil work even though they weren't installed at that machine. But they use only the files in their own installation directories and can run without any added registry entries. Obviously if they were default for opening som file type, that will have to be re-set. But the programs themselves for the most part will still work.

Examples of programs that continue to work are Google Earth, Firefox, inluding customisations, Chrome, Mirc, Aomei, Qbittorrent, Thunderbird, Media Player Classic, VLC, Audacity

More complex programs will not work anymore. For instance, Office, Adobe products, Itunes, Logitech Setpoint, OpenVPN.

Many things like for instance scripts that you may have written as a scheduled event will continue to work.

Some programs may lose their licensing and you may need to enter license info for a few programs.

:)

 

Automatic upgrade for Windows is almost like an act of.

Microsoft recently released new information about how to manage and schedule the Get Windows 10 app. Please review the following link for details:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3095675

Because Windows 10 is now being issued as a recommended update through Windows Update, this is why the operating system is automatically installing itself. You can modify these settings.

Press Windows key + R

Type: wuapp

Hit Enter

Click Change settings





Under Important updates, click in the list box then select the option Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them

Also make sure you uncheck: Give me recommended updates the say way I receive important updates

Click OK





Additional resources and information:

Option 1:
How to Disable the Get Windows 10 Update GWX App Completely

Option 2:
Stop the Windows 10 Upgrade with Never 10 or the GWX App Itself

Microsoft’s
Official Info on Windows 10 Upgrade Notification and Scheduling

Microsoft
to Remove Windows 10 Upgrade Nag Notification

If your system is already in the process of upgrading, please let it complete setup. For instructions about what you can do after setup is complete successfully, please read further on down.

 

Automatic upgrade for Windows is almost like an act of.

Dear Windows Developers and Microsoft,

When I explicitly deny your attempts to upgrade for about half a year, that usually means I don't want to upgrade. When I come back to my office over the weekend and see that your Windows 10 has my Windows 7 computer, I really don't care that you give me
an option to take hours to re-install something that I should not have left in the first place. I never gave you my explicit consent. Maybe all of your employees need to take the that are offered in universities.

In other words, "no" means "no". "No" doesn't mean "over the weekend when I'm not there to explicitly deny your request over and over again". Does that make sense? Or should we just jump over to Linux completely so that this doesn't happen ever again?

Yours truly,

A customer.