Installing Windows 10 from windows vista

Installing Windows 10 from windows vista I have a Dell Inspiron 531, we have been using it for years, however over the last couple of years we have not used it. It has windows vista installed I am wanting to upgrade it to Windows 10. So I took a hard drive that had windows 10 on it and installed just to make sure everything would work with the hardware and all. Everything did work just fine.
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 211

Total answers/comments: 4

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Guest [Entry]

"Hi Brent,

You are lucky your AMD CPU is 64bit. 4GB RAM is fine for most basic activities.

There are PCI Express ports for graphics card and even a USB 3.0 upgrade,

Before doing anything else update the BIOS. I believe 1.08 is the newest:

https://www.dell.com/support/home/nz/en/...

I’m presuming you downloaded the ISO file for Windows 10 64bit from Microsoft. Don’t use the DELL version - limited drivers, etc.

Download Rufus 2.18 last version for Vista and Window2s XP

https://rufus.ie/downloads/

Run this with a USB thumb drive in a USB port.

MBR Partition Scheme and the USB must be NTFS formatted.

Power on and tap F2 at Dell logo. Under “Main” change Legacy Diskette drive A to “None”.

Also, change the first boot priority to “USB drive”.

Hit F10 to” Save and Exit”.

Remember to change the first boot priority back to “hard drive”.

I may have left a small step out so be sure to carefully read the screens in the BIOS.

Let us know how it goes and don’t hesitate to ask more questions."

Guest [Entry]

Did you burn the ISO image to a DVD-R? Some computers will not recognize a boot media that is DVD-RW.

Guest [Entry]

"Unless your hardware has Win10 drivers across the board, Win10 is not very likely to work correctly no matter how hard you try. It is very picky about certain chipsets and these older systems are the most likely to give you trouble. Don’t buy a key until you see it works without issue (or if you did, don’t waste it).

You generally need to pick up a used Win8 or Win7 computer to get anything acceptable or purchase a entirely new system based on a modern platform. Practically speaking, the odds are generally not on your side.

The general rule is this:

Win8->10=good (Part change generally not required)Win7->10=Needs work (Check hardware compatibility; change parts as needed)Vista->10=unlikely to work (exceptions happen, but don’t count on it)WinXP->10=0% chance (exceptions happen, but don’t count on it).

The problem is drivers go bad after 2-3 releases due to age and depreciated APIs and any Vista driver is officially 4 OSes old at this point. Hardware age and API depreciation is the primary problem with going beyond 2-3 releases.

As far as boot media you are better off using a USB drive. Dell computers have a one-time boot menu (F12) that presents the other boot options without a BIOS alteration on just about all of them besides the Pentium III systems (which aren’t even USB bootable without help)."

Guest [Entry]

"Did you burn the image to the disc (Not just copy ISO over)?

Does the DVD drive work with any other disks? (Reading/Writing data?)

Is it the right version?

(Check your System info, if the system’s 32 Bit then the installer should be 32 Bit, if it’s 64 Bit, then the installer should be 64 Bit.)

If not, try opening the computer up and seeing if the DVD drive is connected (If it’s IDE, it should be in ‘Slave’. If it’s SATA, it should be in any port.) Try also changing connectors (IDE Slave 0 >> Slave 1, or SATA Port 2 >> Port 3, etc) or changing power cables.

If it comes to the worst, buy a USB DVD drive, and try booting from that. Otherwise, you’re going to need a USB stick with the image burned to it.

Good luck!"