[OFFICIAL] Windows 10 Insider Program

By Ian S.
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Windows Technical Preview  

1,031 members have voted

  1. 1. On a scale of 1-5, 1 being worst, 5 being best. What do you think of Windows 10 from the leaks so far?

    • 5.Great, best OS ever
      156
    • 4. Pretty Good, needs a lot of minor tweaks
      409
    • 3. OK, Needs a few major improvements, some minor ones
      168
    • 2. Fine, Needs a lot of major improvements
      79
    • 1.Poor, Needs too many improvements, all hope is lost, never going to use it
      41

  2. 2. Based on the recent leaks by Neowin and Winfuture.de, my next OS upgrade will be?

    • Windows 10
      720
    • Windows 8
      20
    • Windows 7
      48
    • Sticking with XP
      3
    • OSX Yosemite
      35
    • Linux
      24
    • Sticking with OSX Mavericks
      3

  3. 3. Should Microsoft give away Windows 10 for free?

    • Yes for Windows 8.1 Users
      305
    • Yes for Windows 7 and above users
      227
    • Yes for Vista and above users
      31
    • Yes for XP and above users
      27
    • Yes for all Windows users
      192
    • No
      71

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Grand Master

Circaflex

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Gotenks98 said:

Does anyone know what happens if you have installed multiple PCs with the same live account?

It wont matter, it is tied to the hardware ID. You can have the same Microsoft Account across devices and they will be unique. If your copy is retail, off-the-shelf, you can call MS and they will re-activate it if you move hardware. OEM copies cant be transferred.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, Gary7 said:

What do you mean by standard? What version of 7 Do you have? Actually after today I do not know what happens to your old windows 7 Key as the offer expires today and You can image your Windows 10 and try it?

As long as you've had Windows activated at least once on your hardware, you're fine. My ThinkPad started with Win7, then got Win8, finally Win10 and some Insider builds. I eventually did a clean install of Win10, and it was activated. Being on the insider program means nothing.

 

The only way you wouldn't stay activated is if you completely change your computer's hardware, which has always been the case in the past. But a simple clean install is fine. (I do clean installs roughly once a year).

9 hours ago, LiGhTfast said:

Looks like my live account has the activation not my pc hardware? I think i'll reinstall and use the win7 key just in case

Capture.JPG

Did you buy the license yourself, or was it OEM? I think that message appears if you bought a license yourself, implying it's not strictly tied to the hardware the way an OEM license is. But in practice, neither should matter too much. If it fails to activate in the future, call Microsoft, they usually don't have an issue making it activate.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, Ryoken said:

If you want your free upgrade, I believe you need to install 7, then upgrade to 10, then join the insider program.

Insider program has nothing to do with the free upgrade. The only rule, as far as I know, is you need to have Win7 or Win8 on your computer and then upgrade to Win10. And that only comes into play the very first time. After that, you can freely do clean installs of Win10 (i.e. the method that will generate windows.old), and you're fine. Doing a completely clean install (where you delete the HDD partition that had an old version of Windows) may not activate, but there is little reason to ever do an install that way (especially when you can also do the reset and refresh options).

Grand Master

Ryoken

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Quillz said:

Insider program has nothing to do with the free upgrade. The only rule, as far as I know, is you need to have Win7 or Win8 on your computer and then upgrade to Win10. And that only comes into play the very first time. After that, you can freely do clean installs of Win10 (i.e. the method that will generate windows.old), and you're fine. Doing a completely clean install (where you delete the HDD partition that had an old version of Windows) may not activate, but there is little reason to ever do an install that way (especially when you can also do the reset and refresh options).

I mentioned the Insider Program, cause he was already on it, and sounded like he wanted to remain an Insider.

He simply wanted to insure he had a legit copy of 10 if it wasn't on the insider program. (He said originally he installed the insider builds with the original Insider key, so that doesn't, or at least shouldn't, let you remain on Activated if not on those builds).

 

As for clean installs, I've had to do those 3 times now, on different computers. One was a 8.1-->10 upgrade that wouldn't work right after the upgrade, OR Refresh. One was a 10 RTM -> Nov Update, where the update failed, and it didn't revert back to a working copy of RTM. Last was during the Insider builds for Redstone, I had one where an upgrade to a new fast build was flakey, again refresh didn't solve it, so a clean install was needed before it played nice.

 

I agree MOST people MOST of the time won't need to do it, unless replacing a HDD, but as long as the Motherboard and the like remains the same, it should (and has for me) always activated without issue if you did the upgrade first.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Ryoken said:

I agree MOST people MOST of the time won't need to do it, unless replacing a HDD, but as long as the Motherboard and the like remains the same, it should (and has for me) always activated without issue if you did the upgrade first.

Yes, this is how it ended up working for me. Got a clean install of 10 activated with no issues. But I was always using a Win8 key that I bought, using an insider key as mentioned might cause an issue.

Grand Master

Ryoken

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Quillz said:

Yes, this is how it ended up working for me. Got a clean install of 10 activated with no issues. But I was always using a Win8 key that I bought, using an insider key as mentioned might cause an issue.

Also most people use OEM Computers (Dell, HP, etc), which often have Digital Entitlement and will activate regardless, no keys needed.

Grand Master

adrynalyne

Posted
Posted
13 hours ago, LiGhTfast said:

Whats the deal if you've ran windows 10 insider since first beta with the generic key they emailed out?

 

If I reinstall a standard windows 10 iso will it activate if I leave insider? Only asking because I have a windows 7 key here and dont want to lose the free upgrade if leaving insider removes my activation?

Actually they store their keys in the UEFI, which Windows reads from. 

Grand Master

patseguin Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

Anyone having a problem with Edge opening? Whenever I click it now, it just opens the window for a second then closes. Same thing if I click a url in an email or something.

Proficient

UnclePritchard

Posted
Posted
41 minutes ago, patseguin said:

Anyone having a problem with Edge opening? Whenever I click it now, it just opens the window for a second then closes. Same thing if I click a url in an email or something.

nope it must be something effed up there

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted (edited)

So this is kind of random, but something that had been bothering me for a long time about Win10 (and Win8, actually) is that the removing the drop shadows on desktop icon labels simply wasn't working.

 

2016-08-01.png

 

But I finally figured out why. First, toggling the setting off requires you to logout, reboot, or restart Windows Explorer, unlike most of the other visual effects you can tweak. But that's fine, the issue I had in Win10 was after a seemingly arbitrary amount of time, the drop shadows would come back, even with the setting off. Well, here's the issue... window snapping. For some reason, as soon as you snap a window (such as putting two windows side-by-side), the drop shadows come back. The only fix I know of is to restart Windows Explorer (or again logout or reboot the computer), and the drop shadows will disappear again. I filed a bug report, there is something wrong with window snapping. (While you still had to logout/reboot in Win7, the drop shadows remained off, so the bug seems to be related to window snapping and the introduction of Metro).

 

Totally random, I know, but if anyone else has been annoyed by this (I hate drop shadows and prefer desktop icon labels without them), now you know what's happening.

Edited by Quillz
  • Jackaluichi
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Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

So I just upgraded as well, maybe it's just me but I can't install any edge extensions from the windows store?  It looks like I'm not logged into the store or something?  Anyone having this issue?

 

*Edit* Ok, maybe it was just lagging or maybe it fixed itself when I tried the Xbox app, but the store itself wouldn't login to my account or even show me the option o, so it wouldn't let me install stuff, that works now, so all is well, 14393.10 here, no other issues.

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted
2 minutes ago, UnclePritchard said:

I just noticed that from Settings>System>About tab clicking it crashes the settings app...

Settings app works fine for me, weird, but then again I just upgraded this desktop right from 10586.494 to 14393.10.

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
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