time to replace components in wife's computer for dreaded Win10 to Win11

Wife's computer (was mine awhile back, used for gaming, still using Win10. works great, but cannot upgrade due to older CPU.
Had to buy a new motherboard, CPU, and Ram, and SSD storage. I am putting in top of the line parts, future proof for her.
Still going to leave the older Nvidia card in for now, see if it is good enough for her, non-gaming. Since it is future proofing I did upper end components so in a couple years it will still be rocking. It will basically be like mine, but a lesser video card, and different brand SSD. Some decent sales going on. I already have the Win11 upgrade key, as in the past I bumped it up to Win11, but put it back to Win10. Not cheap though, even with great sales.

Have fun with it

retiredat44 said:

I am putting in top of the line parts

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Have a list?

Scott said:

Have fun with it



Have a list?

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almost exact same as mine listed in my computer, slight variations with model numbers

If you don't need higher performance than you already have, you can also bypass compatibility check and upgrade to Windows 11 your current system. See respective thread.

spapakons said:

If you don't need higher performance than you already have, you can also bypass compatibility check and upgrade to Windows 11 your current system. See respective thread.

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i did that with her computer that was mine, but decided to leave it as win10. I am going to leave her with a computer with no hacks... plus I already have the win11 license for when I did the win11 hack.

You don't need a new license! Once a computer has Windows 10 or 11 activated, you can format and reinstall 10 or 11 (either of the two) and it will activate automatically when first online and contacts Microsoft servers. Therefore, since you have Windows 10 activated you can upgrade or clean install Windows 11 and it will activate. No new license needed, unless you want to upgrade from Home to Pro or higher version. Also the architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) and the first language (such as US English), make no difference. Here in Greece we can buy a computer imported from abroad (such as from Germany) and format the foreign Windows and install Windows 10/11 Greek or US English (or whatever other language). It will activate automatically.

spapakons said:

You don't need a new license! Once a computer has Windows 10 or 11 activated, you can format and reinstall 10 or 11 (either of the two) and it will activate automatically when first online and contacts Microsoft servers. Therefore, since you have Windows 10 activated you can upgrade or clean install Windows 11 and it will activate. No new license needed, unless you want to upgrade from Home to Pro or higher version. Also the architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) and the first language (such as US English), make no difference. Here in Greece we can buy a computer imported from abroad (such as from Germany) and format the foreign Windows and install Windows 10/11 Greek or US English (or whatever other language). It will activate automatically.

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There is no 32 bit version of Windows 11. You can also not find installation media for Windows 10 32-bit from what I read.

gunrunnerjohn said:

You can also not find installation media for Windows 10 32-bit from what I read.

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Yes you can.
X86 are 32 bit builds.

KevTech said:

Yes you can.
X86 are 32 bit builds.

category:w10-22h2 - Browse known builds

category:w10-22h2 - Browse known builds on UUP dump. UUP dump lets you download Unified Update Platform files, like Windows Insider updates, directly from Windows Update.

uupdump.net

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I know it was offered initially, but I thought they've disavowed any knowledge of the 32-bit version recently. Of course, they're about to disavow any knowledge of Windows 10 pretty soon.

gunrunnerjohn said:

There is no 32 bit version of Windows 11. You can also not find installation media for Windows 10 32-bit from what I read.

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I was referring to the installation key. If a computer doesn't have a digital license in Microsoft servers, Windows will ask for a valid key to activate. The key is the same for Windows 10 32-bit or 64-bit or Windows 11, provided we are talking about the same version (Home or Pro). The architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) and the language makes no difference. All can activate either Windows 10 or 11 of the same version. So if you have Windows 11 Home and want to upgrade to Pro you can use a Windows 10 Pro 32-bit key. Until recently you could also use a Windows 7 Professional or a Windows 8/8.1 Pro key.

spapakons said:

I was referring to the installation key.

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Agreed, the key is the same for all.

Daddy's gotta brand new key!

Now you have an excuse to build yourself another PC.

(You may slip this one past the Mrs. for a time but you don't fool me. I'm an old PC builder.)

Have fun!

gunrunnerjohn said:

I know it was offered initially, but I thought they've disavowed any knowledge of the 32-bit version recently. Of course, they're about to disavow any knowledge of Windows 10 pretty soon.

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If you already bought your good lady a brand new system board I can almost guarantee you that it will handle a 64 bit OS. Could it be that she just wants to keep her Win 10? Reason I'm asking is because my wife insists on keeping her Windows 10 with all her programs and games etc. I'm gently trying to persuade her to move over to Win 11 this fall. I have Windows 11 installed on her unit by means of multi-boot but she never uses it.

Scannerman said:

If you already bought your good lady a brand new system board I can almost guarantee you that it will handle a 64 bit OS. Could it be that she just wants to keep her Win 10? Reason I'm asking is because my wife insists on keeping her Windows 10 with all her programs and games etc. I'm gently trying to persuade her to move over to Win 11 this fall. I have Windows 11 installed on her unit by means of multi-boot but she never uses it.

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She can keep everything AND upgrade to Windows 11. Less work for you. An upgrade is always easier than a clean installation with hundreds of GB to backup and tons of applications and games to reinstall. Did I mention she will kill you if you dare to lose her game progress? Don't think about it, upgrade is your safe bet, avoid a clean installation by all costs.

spapakons said:

She can keep everything AND upgrade to Windows 11. Less work for you. An upgrade is always easier than a clean installation with hundreds of GB to backup and tons of applications and games to reinstall. Did I mention she will kill you if you dare to lose her game progress? Don't think about it, upgrade is your safe bet, avoid a clean installation by all costs.

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IF ... You choose this method I highly advise cloning the Windows 10 drive first so that you will have a backup copy on hand in case it glitches. I will never forget how I chose the upgrade instead of opting for a clean install and losing everything because Windows refused to roll back to Win 10 on a perfectly compatible Windows 11 ready build. You don't want this. In fact, it is probably better to do a clean install with your brand new Windows 11 activation key and run with dual boot. This is how I managed to stay out of the dog house with the Mrs. Besides, support for Win 10 doesn't end until October. This leaves plenty of time to get those games and things transferred over one-by-one in a safe and effective fashion. My advice: Opt for dual boot. You already have the key.

Correction: Clone your Windows 10 system and attempt the upgrade to 11. Murphy's Law saw it has 10% chance to succeed. BS! My experience says it has over 80% chance to succeed. Go ahead. IF it fails, restore Windows 10 and try again some other time.

The success of an upgrade really depends on the state of the WIn10 environment. In my case when I recently replaced my Win10 main computer, I went for the clean install. My Win10 machine had several oddities that I was never able to resolve. I had things like if I didn't reboot the machine regularly, it would slowly slow down and finally it would be lost in LaLa land until I reset it to reboot. It was taking 15 minutes to wake up from sleep, and forget about a shutdown, it would just hang there with a blank screen. I had delayed doing anything about them for a long time because I had so many applications installed that I use and a lot of custom configuration as well. I was loath to try to recreate all that, so I put off the new machine and the upgrade to Win11.

spapakons said:

Correction: Clone your Windows 10 system and attempt the upgrade to 11. Murphy's Law saw it has 10% chance to succeed. BS! My experience says it has over 80% chance to succeed. Go ahead. IF it fails, restore Windows 10 and try again some other time.

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Better to err on the side of caution. If the install fails and Windows fails to roll back on the failed upgrade (as it did with me) at least by having a clone on hand nothing is lost. If the upgrade succeeds, par for the course — again, nothing is lost. Plus, in the event that something goes awry down the road there's still an OS on hand to plug back into the PC in the event of an emergency.

Murphy's Law in my case: Before upgrading from 23H2 to 24H2, I wanted to clone my then 480GB SSD, but I didn't have a spare disk, so I bought a new 1TB SSD (I wouldn't like to miss the chance for a hardware upgrade as well) I did the clone and upgraded to 24H2. Until one day I had too many applications open that the computer would be very slow. I didn't have the patience to wait for it to be responsive again, so I switched it off by turning off the PSU! BIG mistake. The 1TB hard disk who was busy at the time got a lethal charge and good bye! It wasn't detected at all by the system! I returned to the shop in order to replace it under Warranty. So in the mean time I got back to 23H2 and did all the updates there. When I got back the 1TB replacement, I wanted to clone 23H2 again and upgrade to 24H2. I did, but for some reason the clone wouldn't boot. "No fear, I have seen that before, simply the clone was not that successful, I will do it again", I thought. There is a Greek expression "When Man makes plans, God laughs" (equivalent to Murphy's Law "If something can go wrong, it will"). For some reason my 480GB was damaged as well and wouldn't boot either. The only solution I had was to clean install Windows 11 24H2 on my new 1TB and then copy my data from 480GB. With my limited time it took 2-3 days to have a workable system (I first installed the apps and games I use most), and then I slowly install the remaining apps and games. Many days later, still I haven't found enough time to reinstall everything I had before, that's why I don't like a new installation. If there was a way to backup and restore apps, much like Titanium Backup for rooted Android phones, no problem. You clean install Windows and use the app to restore everything else without reinstalling. Unfortunately, this is not possible. If anyone knows better, please reply!

Your experience mirrors mine. On the good side, after a few years of running, there is a lot of bloat on most Windows installations, so I have a leaner and meaner machine now. As I discover something missing, I just add it at that time. I have all my major applications installed, Word, Excel, Visio, and of course, my hardware/software development applications and 3D printing stuff. I do miss a couple of things I had on Win10, but in general everything is cooking again.