Windows 10: Upgrade to Windows 10 back after switching hard drive

Hi all,

I am a neophyte to the Windows Community so...


I have a laptop (VAIO SVS15) that was previously upgrade to Windows 10 from 7 during the year-long Windows 10 Free Upgrade program, but the original hard drive that was previously used to upgrade died after a couple of years and the original backup disk, which contains Windows 7 files, was used to restore the computer after the HD was replaced. Now the computer is running Windows 7, with smoothness at first but now lags a lot. I have previously found that if the computer has upgraded to 10 before, we are able to download 10 again directly from Microsoft. That way didn't show up anymore I think as all upgrades now costs like several hundred dollars. Does that way still exist? Can I still upgrade that computer to 10 even though the hard drive was replaced?


Thank you!

:)

 

Hard drive/ OS issue

a guy suggested :

• shutdown
• unhooked HDD
• restarted
• yay !!
• reconnected HDD
• restarted
• yay !!

also , try method 3
Fix: 'The Drive Where Windows is Installed is Locked'

 

Windows 10 upgrade rant..

The free space shouldn't prevent you from upgrading to built 1607. I manually upgraded my own laptop which had only 9gigs free space left on the system drive.

I unzipped the Windows 10 Pro anniversary edition ISO on my D drive, and started the upgrade process from there. At one point the installer complained about not having enough free space on the main drive, i just had to point it to the D drive to proceed to the next step. Now the rollback installation is stored there and doesn't clog up the C drive anymore.

In your case you could insert a large sdcard to act as the required rollback drive, i'm pretty sure it would do the trick.

Oh and by the way, if you want to further compress your System files:

• do a search Command Prompt, right-click it, and select Run as administrator.
• Type COMPACT.EXE /CompactOS:always and hit Enter.

You'll will gain anything from 2 to 4 gigs free space after it's done.

 

Unable to access the external hard drive after upgrading to Windows 10

Hi Alan,

As you are facing issues with accessing the external hard drive after upgrading to Windows 10, do not worry we will help you with this issue.

Do provide us additional information to assist you better with this issue:

• What is the make and model of your devices?
• What exactly happens when you try to access the drive?
• What is the complete error message/ error code of this issue?
• Were you able to detect the device under Device Manager/ File Explorer?

Step 1: As a workaround, I suggest you to do the following to detect the issue:

• Connect the hard drive to different port and check if the issue persists.
• Connect different hard drive to the same port and check.
• Connect different hard drives to different ports and check.

Step 2: If the device is not detected on your computer try to run
Hardware and Devices troubleshooter as it checks for common problems and makes sure that any new device or hardware connected to your PC is installed correctly.

• Press Windows key from the keyboard, type
  Troubleshooting and select it.
• Click on view all option on the upper left corner of
  Troubleshooting window.
• Select the Hardware and Device
  options from the list.
• Click Next to run the Hardware and Device
  Troubleshooter

Step 3: I suggest you to check if there are any drivers with yellow exclamatory mark in the Device Manager.

• Press Windows + X from the keyboard, click on
  Device Manager.
• Right click on the detected driver, click on Properties
  and check the device status.
  

Hope it helps. Try the above and update us the status of this issue with the required information, we will be happy to help you further.

Thank you.