dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

I have a nework with a very large Windows 7 64bit ultimate machine, a Window 7 pro 64bit with 500 gb drive and shared to a 4 tb drive on the large windows 7 machine, and a laptop windows 7 64bit laptop with 500 gb hd and uses a 2TB external WD drive that is removed and connected to both of the other machines. Also on this network is a 4tb Western Digital cloud with a 2tb wd USB 3 external connected, a Canon MF4270 laserprinter scanner fax machine connected to all 3 computers via enet, a Dlink Gigabit router,and 3 gigabit switches connected to Samsung 60" 3d plasma TV, Samsung 3d blueray player, Sony blueray connected to Samsung tv in bedroom and wireless connected throughout house, garage, front and back yards plus to my photo helper's laptop across the street via wi-fi. I am not planning on upgrading the main Windows 7 pc until MS comes up with a conversion pkg and I suspect that due to their "evaluation" of the system, and my AMD graphics card etc, it may be down the road. I also suspect that due to the 'simpleness" of the other 2 machines, they will be offered upgrades at any time.
Now for the question, after describing the environment. How will introducing the 2 Windows 10 machines affect their connectivity to the Windows 7 machine and it's shared drives? I know that I didn't have any problem with my old window xp machine connecting but as that say, time and technology move forward and sometimes MS gets the cart before the horse. Any ideas?

singleviking Loc: Lake Sebu Eco Park, Philippines

File structure and delimiters haven't change from the ones used in WIN7, so I don't think you will have any difficulties. When installing WIN10, the installation program just transferred files and settings to the new OS partition and boot strap routine.
For video playback though, you may need to update the drivers on the WIN10 machine. There will probably be some kind of APP for doing this soon though.

AMD and NVIDEA have already sent out updates for WIN10 drivers but they are used only locally on that specific machine.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Thanks, thats what I was thinking to and Enet is Enet.. which is why a group of diverse machines (including some Macs and Unix/Linux) can all talk to each other via the network. But, having said that, (and I constantly do full backups of all machines) it is a real pain to try to straighten out a problem that might have been avoided by proper investigation and being humble enough to ask those that may have already been through the issue.

singleviking Loc: Lake Sebu Eco Park, Philippines

You're the first one I've heard of with such a diverse network of machines and operating systems. I'm sure there are others but since WIN10 is just released, I suspect they will all wait and see about such difficulties and allow others to resolve them. I really don't see any problems though.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Well the 3 windows 7 machines are all running Adobe cloud on the same 1 user license (2 at a time and remembering to log out of the odd 3rd) and because the Window 7 pro machine has such a small drive, it is using one of the 4tb in the Windows Ultimate for Lightroom Photoshop images. The wife would kill me if I messed up her images.. and claim that I did it because I was jealous of her use of the D70... lol. She already complains that the images are on my computer and I keep explaining that if they were on the small one she would be out of room and the computer would cease to operate.. She doesn't understand drive space, memory, video memory etc.. she just wants it to work her way. lol So, the last thing I need to do is mess up the upgrade on her computer... anything that happens would all be my fault.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

My home network is not too dissimilar to yours, all Windows 7 of some type, primarily x64, wifi and Gbit enet, scanner, networked printers, blue ray via wifi etc., around 20TB disk....

I do not plan to put that at risk for a while, but I have just pulled out an old 32bit Toshiba laptop that now has Windows 7 home on it. I created a USB install kit for Windows 10 last night (approx 6GB for both 32 and 64bit) and am going to see what happens before touching any of the main machines...

Although I have read good comments about W10, there are also comments about bugs and device driver issues emerging, so I thought I would give it a test drive for a few weeks or months to see what happens.

As I find things out I'll report back....

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Thanks.. I am probably going to do the Windows 7 laptop when the wife gets back from Philly about Sept 1st... Will probably sit tight on the others unless I decide to do the small desktop after (of coarse) doing a full backup.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

So, at the moment, having wasted over two hours - fortunately doing other things - I am at a complete fail state. The upgrade failed to acknowledge a legitimate product key from a Windows upgrade package. More than once....

My Windows 7 versions are upgrades, mainly from XP, which were upgrades from previous versions in some situations....

As far as I can tell Microsoft wants the original OS version installed first, but I'm checking into that. Do I plan to reinstall XP, I don't think so. I could, I do have the media etc., but that would be crazy in my opinion.

I may be misreading this, but at the moment, this looks like another monumental Redmond screw up that I am going to leave alone for a long while. Windows 7 support goes to the end of the decade....

For now, Windows 7 rules, and I have much better ways to spend my time....

They said it was easy. In my book they lied! At least I only tried a test machine and not a production unit.... For that I am grateful. I can let other people work out the problems.

So far, I am very unimpressed with the ease of the upgrade, they didn't even let me get as far as system, software or device driver failures, and I have legitimate Microsoft software.

Big thumbs down on first experience, bad dog Satya, no donut....

:thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown:

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Out of curiosity and because I don't remember... Did you get a Windows 7 license key with your upgrade?

Also, download and run Belarc Advisor prersonal audit.. It is free and it will list every license key for every piece of software on your computer including the OS. It also will give you a complete list of everything on the computer from monitor to security packs to keyboard.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

I keep a printout of each of my machines in a file drawer and a second in the motherboard box that was for each machine.. I also keep a pdf copy in the backup folder for each of my machines.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

duplicate upload

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Hi, yes I have license keys for Windows going way back, plus install kits, even to Win 95, and certainly for every upgrade. They are all activated and legitimate. I will check out the audit, thanks.

I'm looking into things, but it appears that doing a clean install is not that easy at the moment..., the idea of a disk format and a clean install has always been attractive in the Windows world. That's what I was planning to do with the old machine, but it may not be quite so simple this time...

I have my main machine on a dual boot with two W7 boot disks, so I'm playing with the old one right now. It seems to be more complicated than it needs to be....

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

I know what you mean. I would have a coronary if I had to do a reinstall on this machine. It's easier to just add hard drives, Network Attached Drives and limp along.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Update. It appears that Microsoft's validation servers may be overwhelmed currently from some of Mr. Softy's community posts. Perhaps doing an install - without doing updates - will be cleaner and faster.

The community posts indicate that if you get the request for registration keys then it can be skipped and attended to later, and in fact may just do that itself in a few days.

Taking another run at this right now on my alternative boot disk, but took the precaution of doing full Windows Update cycles first....

Fingers crossed.

Magic Lantern and CHDK were so much easier and they are unofficial hacks. I always get the feeling that Microsoft should be a lot better at this stuff than they actually are....

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

You forget that Microsoft is like alot of other big corporations. They have some very good people, and some average people and some very very bad people.. The very good people are not necessairly the ones making decisions. I suspect that there is a good mix of each in each part of the company. I have been in big corporations that had extremely bright people and others that were very good at covering themselves and taking credit for other peoples work and getting promoted to positions where it was no longer possible to use others decisions or work, From what I have read and heard, Windows 10 has been one of the better rollouts. Having said that, given the millions of people doing the installs on the millions of diversified computers, it only stands to reason that some are going to be problamatic. I know mine will be because of all the stuff I have piled on it. But all we can do is be patient and see what happens.. Just make sure that you always leave yourself a way back to your original system. When I first upgraded this system, I was fortunate to have a 1tb drive that was unused. So, I copied my boot drive to it and then exchanged it for the boot drive to experiment with my upgrades. I was fortunate and the upgades worked, so I waited 6 months to see what happened and then formated teh 1tb drive and used it in in a Network Attached drive array.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

No I do not forget, I just try to hold them to the standards that they claim to deliver. My expectations are generally set pretty low, and usually somewhat lower in Microsoft's case. I've been using their software since they existed and computers since before they existed.

Microsoft guys make a lot of assumptions about what people want or need, and most do not live in the real world, they live in an idealized Windows-based world in Redmond with high speed reliable networks etc. Most of us don't.

I work in the tech industry, hence my caution. The update info they have provided is pretty dumbed down because they think they have thought of everything, but of course, they haven't. That simply isn't possible.

Microsoft set an expectation that this would be simple. It is not, and in my experience is one of the harder updates that I have experienced, perhaps because of the reliance on internet connectivity.

So far, my experience suggests wait. I'm totally happy with Windows 7, and Microsoft has now given me a whole bunch more reasons to be happy with Windows 7 and not even consider Windows 10 for a long time.

Even the upgrade that worked on my dual boot disk which takes forever to download is very intrusive in what information it wants me to share and it takes work to investigate and to start shutting down all of those little "give us information sharing rights" defaults.

Maybe we could have the NSA give us an OS to use. At least they are regulated and I trust them more than I do Facebook, Google or Microsoft.

So, this is an ongoing experience, but if you are of a cautious or conservative mind I might suggest waiting a while.

So far I am unimpressed....