Computers

[eddy]

I have an older desktop that I built about 5 or 6 years ago and it's still running windows xp. It's not used very much, but is there a way to go about upgrading to a newer version of windows that would be free?

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

this could probably go in dodint's thread of IT

[columbia]

this could probably go in dodint's thread of IT

Thread police

[shmenguin]

you can find windows 7 licenses floating around for like 20 or 30 bucks

[dodint]

I might have a Windows 8 key you could have.

There isn't a direct WinXP to Win7/8/10 upgrade though. You'd have to either go to Vista and then to Win7, which would open you up to 10. Or do a clean install of Win7 and then decide if you wanted to do the free Win10 upgrade this year.

I have an old laptop I took from XP SP3 to Win 8.1 Pro with a fresh USB based install. It's still a great machine.

[eddy]

geez, this sounds like it may be a pain with this vista deal, what would be the easiest thing to do (short of buying a new pc)

[Miami Vice]

install linux mint

[dodint]

geez, this sounds like it may be a pain with this vista deal, what would be the easiest thing to do (short of buying a new pc)

Easiest thing is to just do a clean install of Windows 7. Save everything you want to keep from the computer, like documents and pictures, etc to a thumbdrive, dvd, online storage, whatever.
Then get a Windows 7 ISO from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwar ... d/windows7 (requires product key) or pick up an .iso from a torrent or other source at your own risk. If you get an ISO from somewhere else and do not get a Win7 key, the system will work for 30 days and then won't get updates after that.

Burn the ISO to a DVD or a thumb drive. I really like http://www.isotousb.com/ and rufus for making bootable thumb drives.

Make sure your computer BIOS has your thumb drive in the list of boot devices before your HDD. Or, if your computer gives you an option to use boot options at startup you can try that. It's usually F2 or F8 at the startup screen.

Stick the thumbdrive in your computer and reboot, then go through the Windows 7 setup. This is a clean installation so your XP stuff will all be overwritten, which is why it was important to save it all somewhere else before you started.


Now, if you're happy to do all this but don't want to hunt down a Win7 license you can do this whole process with a Linux ISO. In fact, the Linux distros usually have their own software that will install the ISO on a thumbdrive for you. Linux Mint was suggested by MV. For those new to Linux I like http://www.ubuntu.com/download myself. Pretty easy, and free. Personally my Linux machine is a Kali 2.0 environment but that is a little specialized for your use.

I know that's a lot of information but if you have questions ask. I'm blasting this out at work real quick so it's kind of jumbled.