Best update route from Win 7 to Win 10?

Brian G

Brian G

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I am currently running a legitimately purchased Win 7 64-bit and everything I need runs fine.
I have now twice attempted to update to Win 10 using the online MS "Windows Upgrade Advisor."

I obtained a new SSD and cloned my current installation to it.
I then installed the new SSD and verified it worked correctly (Which it did.)
Next, using the. newly cloned drive, I went to the MS Upgrade Advisor website and followed the steps there.
This appeared to result in a fresh install of Win 10.

However, when I tried to run my "Luminar" image editor it appeared to cause a fatal error.
The computer would crash, as if the power had been removed. The pilot LED went out and the thing sat there dead for a few seconds before rebooting as if it were starting from cold.
One thing I did as soon as I'd installed the new OS was to make sure I had the latest graphics driver software for my AMD Radeon R560 video card.
I contacted Skylum support and they seemed to think I had a problem with my video driver, and sent me a link to a video driver uninstaller (DDU)
I deleted the existing driver and reinstalled but the problem was still there.
I don't need to do anything with Luminar, if I just open the program and wait a few seconds, the system will crash.
If I go to "Settings" it tells me I am running a registerd version of Windows, but I am getting some other strange events, like it asks me to sign into my MS account, which I have done, but then it asks me again to sign in and seems to be in some kind of loop.
I have done this update procedure twice now, and in desperation I have now gone back to my original Win 7 SSD which works fine..

I suspect the on-line upgrade of Win 10 is corrupt, but can anyone suggest a different upgrade route?
Naturally, I'd prefer to spend as little money as possible to carry this out.
I presume, if I buy Windows 7 installation media, then I will have to reinstall all my software, which I'd rather not do.

Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.
 
You could create a memory stick with windows on to allow a refresh installation, rather than online.
 
I would do a clean install, which is I think what Toni is suggesting:

https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

Now that your PC has been activated with Windows 10, there should be no issues with installing a clean copy rather than an upgrade. It will wipe everything, but you already have the old drive to go back to if necessary. You will need the installers and licence keys for any other software you have installed, and of course backups of your own files. I would sort out the graphics driver before attempting to install Luminar. AMD have Windows 10 drivers on their own site for your card if Windows doesn't handle this automatically.
 
yeah just get a bootable usb stick as tony said, its so easy to install windows now
 
Retune said:
I would do a clean install, which is I think what Toni is suggesting:

https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

Now that your PC has been activated with Windows 10, there should be no issues with installing a clean copy rather than an upgrade. It will wipe everything, but you already have the old drive to go back to if necessary. You will need the installers and licence keys for any other software you have installed, and of course backups of your own files. I would sort out the graphics driver before attempting to install Luminar. AMD have Windows 10 drivers on their own site for your card if Windows doesn't handle this automatically.
Click to expand...
OK Thanks.
One of the reasons I cloned the original drive was for times like these.
I'll study the "Howtogeek" website and see if I understand it.
All my software is genuine and licensed, so there should be no problems reinstalling it, other than the time, which is something I wanted to avoid.
I uninstalled the AMD graphics drivers and reinstalled the recommended driver, but I still have the problem.

Strange, I thought MS had withdrawn support for Win 7 in January - I just had a Windows Update!
 
One further question.

If I'm going to do a "Clean Install" would it be a good idea to erase and reformat my SSD?
So that it's installing on essentially a new, blank drive.
 
Brian G said:
One further question.

If I'm going to do a "Clean Install" would it be a good idea to erase and reformat my SSD?
So that it's installing on essentially a new, blank drive.
Click to expand...

Yes
 
Not sure how much of this you might need to do?
I recently had to install an ATi HD4550 on Windows 10 - which was a royal pain.
I came across this video which explains how to REALLY get rid of the ATi drivers and start again.
Main step seems to be pulling the network connection to prevent W10 playing fetch by itself :)
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6BCNAEpdX0


The reason I had to do it was because the GT 610 I planned on using had died in storage - would work on the default MS VGA driver but as soon as it had it's own the system wouldn't boot properly - so might be worth checking your card has survived if you can?
 
AMcUK said:
Not sure how much of this you might need to do?
I recently had to install an ATi HD4550 on Windows 10 - which was a royal pain.
I came across this video which explains how to REALLY get rid of the ATi drivers and start again.
Main step seems to be pulling the network connection to prevent W10 playing fetch by itself :)
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6BCNAEpdX0


The reason I had to do it was because the GT 610 I planned on using had died in storage - would work on the default MS VGA driver but as soon as it had it's own the system wouldn't boot properly - so might be worth checking your card has survived if you can?
Click to expand...
Hmm. Thanks for the suggestion, but the card referred to in this is somewhat older than the AMD card I have (R560) but it's interesting, if you can stand the flickering video, which was hurting my eyes..
Skylum (Luminar) requested that I delete the installed AMD Radeon driver using an uninstaller program called "DDU" (DisplayDriverUninstaller) this has to be run with the system in SAFE mode. I followed the instructions and removed and then reinstalled the AMD Radeon Driver but it didn't cure the problem, the system still crashed.
There was no sugestion for checking if there was a native driver on the system which also needed removing.
I didn't install the very latest driver but the "recommended" driver, which was one step back from the very latest one.
If the driver is advertised as being for Win 10 I don't see why it needs to be run in "compatibility mode."

I think I'm going to go ahead with this "clean" install and see how that goes.
I can always fall back on my original Windows 7 SSD if all else fails.
 
Thanks to all for the advice and suggestions.

I have erased and reformatted my new SSD drive.
I have created a Windows 10 Install on a USB drive.
I have downloaded a list of my installed software programs using Belarc Advisor.

Todays "entertainment" will be to install the "new" SSD and do a clean install of Windows 10, followed by a fresh install of all my current programs.

I can already see, on the list of installed programs, a number of items that I can do away with, so it will be a good oportunity to do some tidying and "housekeeping."

As I said, I can always fall back on my original Windows 7 SSD if all else fails.
 
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Well all else DID fail, so here I am back on Windows 7 again.

I carried out all the steps mentioned above and did a "Clean" install of Win 10
The first thing I did after the Windows 10 install was download and install the most recent (recommended) AMD Radeon drivers for my Radeon R560 video card.
Next I downloaded and installed Luminar 4.
It seemed to run longer this time and I thought it was OK, but after a short time the complete system crashed in exactly the same way, as if the power had been switched off.

I can only conclude that there is some kind of incompatibility between the AMD R560 video card and Luminar, since, as far as I can tell, Luminar is the only software that behaves this way.
My main developer/editor is On1 2020 and that performs perfectly, it's only when I run Luminar that I have the problem.
All my other software also appears to run trouble free, although I haven't had time to exhaustively test every program.
Luminar have offered me a refund, but I find some of the Luminar features are useful and I'm reluctant to give them up.
I don't want to go to the expense of trying a new video card just to see if that makes a difference. The cost of a new card is more than the value of the software, but it would prove the theory.
It looks like I'm stuck with Windows 7 if I want to use Luminar, or accept a refund from Skylum and use a different program if I want to migrate to Win 10.
I'm quite happy to keep with Win 7 and accept the security risks, but the time is going to come when Win 10 becomes inevitable. There are already raw codecs available for Win 10 that do not exist for Win 7, so I cannot view previews of some of my recent raw files.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
You've probably already tried allowing Windows alone to sort out the drivers rather the download from AMD? If Luminar works under W7, you might also try the old Windows 7 drivers (which may or may not work under Windows 10). I had a laptop for which there were no specific W10 drivers and MS's generic drivers didn't work properly, but the older W7 drivers that came with the machine were fine.
 
Retune said:
You've probably already tried allowing Windows alone to sort out the drivers rather the download from AMD? If Luminar works under W7, you might also try the old Windows 7 drivers (which may or may not work under Windows 10). I had a laptop for which there were no specific W10 drivers and MS's generic drivers didn't work properly, but the older W7 drivers that came with the machine were fine.
Click to expand...
No, I deliberately went to the Radeon website and found the most recent recommended driver there.
As part of the AMD install, the software performs a "compatibility test" to make sure you are installing the right software for the graphics card, so I'm not sure if it's possible to fool it into installing the "wrong" driver.
It's an expensive option (higher cost than the actual Luminar software) but I might even consider installing a different graphics card, if it would cure the problem.
I realise they are not going to tell me up front, but I've asked Skylum Support for some guidance on video card types.
The annoying thing is that the same card, and nominally the same driver, perform fine with Win7.
 
I would let Windows alone have a shot at it if you're not sick of reinstalling by now. As for the W7 drivers, I don't know if there's any way of installing them manually without that tool, or what happens if you start with the W7 download...
 
Thank you for the suggestions.
I'm getting pretty fed up with fiddling now and I've reverted to my W 7 SSD for the time being.
I will have another look next week, but I'm awaiting a reply from Skylum and that may affect my next course of action.
I can certainly delete the video drivers and let Windows try and sort them out and I will try that when I get back to it.
AMD archive their earlier drivers, so I've also downloaded the earliest version that is on their website (released December 2019)
 
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I know it always better to do a clean install, and not having read the whole thread is it worth cloning your win 7 to the new ssd, check everything is working fine and the update to Win 10.

If you get issues you can always revert you old win 7 drive.
 
jacut1440 said:
yeah just get a bootable usb stick as tony said, its so easy to install windows now
Click to expand...

Theres a chance an older Win 7 computer won't boot from a USB stick, I even had this with a 4 year old Del i3 laptop.
 
sep9001 said:
I know it always better to do a clean install, and not having read the whole thread is it worth cloning your win 7 to the new ssd, check everything is working fine and the update to Win 10.

If you get issues you can always revert you old win 7 drive.
Click to expand...
I've done that twice with the same outcome each time, hence trying the "clean" upgrade.
hashcake said:
Theres a chance an older Win 7 computer won't boot from a USB stick, I even had this with a 4 year old Del i3 laptop.
Click to expand...
My system boots fine from USB stick, and performed the W 10 clean install with no problem.
It seems to be Luminar that is the cause of the problem, since, as far as I can tell, everything else runs OK.
 
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