[seekerofstuff]

Well, since the free upgrade from Win7 to Win10 is about to expire, I have upgraded my HTPC and thought I'd post some notes about the process.

I've been running a HTPC based on an Intel NUC, Win7, and Kodi for about a year now. It has been very stable and reliable, so I was a bit reluctant to upgrade to Win10. However, the free upgrade was too much to pass up on.

• I made a backup of the Win7 system beforehand. You can revert the Win10 upgrade for 30 days after install, but I am not convinced you will get the exact same system back if you decided to do so.
  
• The upgrade process was very simple, with no apparent issues
  
• The process did result in a number of outdated drivers being loaded in the Win10 upgrade process, so I downloaded the current ones from the Intel website. Installing them went well.
  
• Win10 also removed some customisation I had made, such as automatic logons. Easy to put these back.
  
• It also resets a lot of settings. Not all, but enough to be painful. For instance, I have all sounds set to off, as I don't want the HTPC beeping at inappropriate times. The upgrade decided to turn all those back on.
  
• I had installed a registry hack to make the power off sequence from the Harmony remote actually shutdown the HTPC, rather than just put it to sleep. The upgrade changed this back. I had expected that this would be the case.
  
• I also spent some time turning off a lot of Win10 stuff that is not relevant to a HTPC, including all the automatic upload to cloud stuff and a lot of the stuff that records what you do and phones back to Microsoft. I don't think any of this is relevant to a HTPC.
  
• Kodi no longer displays a splash screen on loading. I'm not sure why, and I don't think I'll spend any time finding out why at this point in time.
  
• Kodi also reverted to Directsound for the audio output device. I had to change this back to WASAPI to get back full multichannel output. I have no idea why it changed except that maybe the upgrade changed the identifier for WASAPI, making Kodi go back to the default Directsound one.
  
• I finally implemented Launcher4kodi to manage starting Kodi on boot, rather than sticking a shortcut in the startup program group. Don't know why I waited so long. This works very well.
  

The overall impression is better speed, particularly on startup (always good for a HTPC) and a cleaner user experience outside of Kodi. Overall, I'm pleased at how painless it was.

[skylarking]

On my laptop which i updated yesterday, Win10 boot times are actually slower than Win7 boot times which is odd considering most have said it boots faster.

Like you, i did a Win7 backup to expernal disc but then downloaded the Win10 ISO.
I then used the MS DVD to USB tool to make a bootable USB stick.
Copied GatherOSState.exe from the bootable stick and ran it on the PC i was planning to update.
Then i saved the GenuineTicket.xml to the USB stick.
Finally i could boot with teh install stick and do a clean install wipeing the HDD in the process.
I did not enter product key nor have internet connected.
After a few reboots, i set up a user and then copied the saved GenuineTicket.xml into
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\ClipSVC\GenuineTicket\.
Just one more reboot and i connecting to internet and magically it became activated
My rollback method is thus to restore from my Win7 backup

But Win10 is a pain in some respects.
I've had to turn off a few things, repeatedly.
Win10 has ignored my desires to turn things off and so it turns things on again thinking it knows better.
And Win10 wants to download stuff all the time.
But biggest pain is that i can't turn off Windows Update which is a concern. since i've had updates toast my system in teh past.
Yes it's rare that an update would cause BSOD but it's not unheard of.
So i'd prefer to do updates manually some time later and after checking what they are for and what if anything has occured.
But that's not Win10
As for Win10 being a cleaner UI, well i think it's a little schizophrenic with it's conventional (XP/W7 UI) mixed with tiles and other oddities.

Guesss i like my PC/HTPC to be something other than a tablet/ipad.. but that's just me.
I'll install Kodi and play with it tomorrow. and may grow to like Win10 over time.
But for now, Win10 is a frustrating mix of UI's as i see it...

Glad it all worked for you...

[seekerofstuff]

I think using a non-standard update method may well have created some problems. There is really no need to do anything beyond a straight update, but if you want a clean install, then it's pretty straight forward:

http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-c...indows-10/

If you want to control updates, there are a number of ways to do that, depending on the level of control you want:

http://www.howtogeek.com/224471/how-to-p...g-updates/

The UI is really an improvement. People only have a problem if they keep thinking of Win7 as the only way to do this.

BTW, my usual machines are Macs, but I think that the UI improvements in Win10 are significant and good.

[skylarking]

The install i used was rather straight forward and would not be the cause of longer boot times, or windows playing fast and sneeky with my settings. After all, what i did is just a clean install with what couldn't even be called a hack to get it to activate. As i understand it, i was just doing manually what windows upgrade does automatically (from activation perspective). But TBH i didn't know about Win10 handling older Win 7, 8 & 8.1 keys which make the process i used mute...

As for the UI, it's horses for courses, though i find it's dual personality a bit of a pain. MS should have either gone all the way with the new or stayed with the old. The schizophrenic mix is just nuts... Finding applications on the desktop, task bar, tiles, start menu, etc is just too much of a mix and doesn't allow the best out of either UI...

And pity that users are treated as they are by MS, since they are being forced into group policy or registry hacks just to do what was rather simple before (and in essence set updates to "NO")... But for MS "No" isn't a simple option and doesn't mean NO... Meanwhile MS' beloved APPS are another thing all together as they sneek bandwidth (and it's another round of hacks needed to stop them)...

For my desktop computer with multiple screens, as i have, Win10 and it's ipad approach is not quite right. As such, i restored Win 7 on that machine.
But having said that, on my laptop it's much better after adding a 3rd party start menu and spending some time to customise Win10 to my liking

For HTPC, as long as i can stop updates dead, it should work well (especially if it can be cut down to a minimum).

Now it's time to read and digest the second link you provided.

Cheers..