Question SSD Fresh Installation ??

[seamorton]

Have a HP Compaq 6000 Pro Refurb with HDD & Win 7 installed. I was considering replacing the HDD with a new SSD and do a fresh/clean/new installation using Win 10 pro? or install win 10 with 7 on the HDD ?? Any an all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Hope this helps? Thank you very much! SM

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is this one of those commercial refurb units? Does it have a Win7 COA sticker on it with a product key? If so, it's easy to upgrade to Win10.

With your existing PC, assuming that it's working OK, go to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 , click on the button below "Download installation media", and you should download MediaCreationTool1909.exe .
Save that somewhere, and double-click it.
Plug in a (*blank!) USB flash drive between 8GB and 32GB in size.
Follow the prompts in the MCT tool to make a USB flash drive, select your newly-plugged-in drive letter for the USB flash drive near the end.
!Note that your flash drive will be erased!

Next, power-down the PC. Remove the HDD, and install the SSD (connect SATA data and power). Power-up the PC, plug in the USB flash drive, and boot off of it. Follow the prompts to install Win10 to the SSD. Do not enter a key initially, but choose the edition of Win10 that matches up with your Win7 key.

Then, once Win10 is installed satisfactorily , go into Settings, Update, Activation, and click on the button to enter your product key. Enter the Win7 product key. If everything goes well (must be online to do this), you will eventually see that it Activates.

Congrats, your PC now has activated Win10 on it, on an SSD.

 

[seamorton]

Is this one of those commercial refurb units? Does it have a Win7 COA sticker on it with a product key? If so, it's easy to upgrade to Win10.

This SC has had this unit setting aside for awhile. Here's the rest of the story. As best as I can recall it was described as a refurb unit with win 10 installed. However there is no win 10 coa sticker that I can locate.

I did a dual boot with Linux however Linux could not find win 10 OS on the HDD. Therefore Win 10 evidently was erased from the HDD when Linux was installed. Linux was removed when I reinstalled/installed win 7.

I was able to install win 7 with a win 7 re installation dvd Which seems to working satisfactorily. The win 10 worked horribly slow with the PC. So this PC decided to use the PC as an experiment in Computer Building 101.

Essentially, as mentioned, I thought about subbing the SSD for the HDD to install a fresh win 10 using the HDD/SSD and see if I could get win 10 to perform faster. This then would be my back up PC.

I was able to download and save the link you provided on USB for a fresh installation of win 10 on either the HDD or in this case the SSD when I get it replaced.

Does the New SSD have to be formatted or prepped in any way? Having another senior moment, but what would I have to do to install win 10 with/over the win 7 on HDD or just format the HDD and remove/erase whatever is stored?

Thanks very much for taking the time to provide the link, information & instructions. Apologize for taking so long to get a reply back. Hope this helps.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I hope that you actually RAN "MediaCreationTool1909.exe" on a Windows 7/10 PC, and not just downloaded that file itself to a USB drive. That won't work. You need to run it from a (Windows) PC, then follow the prompts and have it create the USB flash drive, after downloading Windows in the background for you.

Secondly, no specific prep needed for the drive to install Windows on. Best if it doesn't even have any partitions on it.

 

[seamorton]

I hope that you actually RAN "MediaCreationTool1909.exe" on a Windows 7/10 PC, and not just downloaded that file itself to a USB drive. That won't work. You need to run it from a (Windows) PC, then follow the prompts and have it create the USB flash drive, after downloading Windows in the background for you.

So far ... This is what I have/done. I downloaded the MediaCreationTool1909. exe. to my PC/home. Then transferred the PC/home download to a USB flash drive. When the flash drive is connected to The refurb PC win 7 seems to able to read it.

This is all rather fuzzy to me?? as to what to do next? Would like to remove/replace the refurb PC single HDD and set the refurb PC up with the single SSD as the permanent drive.

Now here is where it is getting foggy for this SC? Are you saying/suggesting that I can only install/upgrade my refurb PC with the win 10 software dvd that I purchased using the USB mediacreationtool. with/on the HDD.

Essentially, do/can I replace the HDD first with the New clean SSD with the USB connected creation link and install the win 10 pro dvd. I can only install/set up the win 10 pro dvd on 1 pc only. I presume that changing/using/installing win 10 on another type of drive would not be acceptable.

Realize that this is probably getting confusing. You're information has given me a better insight as to what to do with this refurb unit. Thanks so very much for taking your time to assist this SC with this matter. SM

 

[VirtualLarry]

Now here is where it is getting foggy for this SC? Are you saying/suggesting that I can only install/upgrade my refurb PC with the win 10 software dvd that I purchased using the USB mediacreationtool. with/on the HDD.

Essentially, do/can I replace the HDD first with the New clean SSD with the USB connected creation link and install the win 10 pro dvd. I can only install/set up the win 10 pro dvd on 1 pc only. I presume that changing/using/installing win 10 on another type of drive would not be acceptable.

Realize that this is probably getting confusing. You're information has given me a better insight as to what to do with this refurb unit. Thanks so very much for taking your time to assist this SC with this matter. SM

You're really, really, over-thinking this. This does not involve your original Windows 10 installation DVD in any way.

1) Get a USB flash drive, 8GB to 32GB in size.
2) Click on the link that originally provided, download MediaCreationTool1909.exe onto a Windows OS PC that's already running. RUN that tool, PLUG IN the flash drive, and FOLLOW THE PROMPTS. Create a bootable USB media using that tool. It may take a half-hour to an hour to download Windows 10 over your internet connection. Once it has downloaded, verified, and written to the USB flash drive, you are ready to start the process of actual SSD installation.
3) Take the PC that you want to install the SSD into. Power it down, unplug it. Attach the SSD (both data and power connectors). Plug everything back in, plug the USB flash drive that you created in #2 into a USB port, in front is generally fine, and power the system on.
4) You MAY need to hit a hot-key to boot off of the USB flash drive, it MAY NOT BE automatic. Though it could, if the SSD is entirely blank and fresh and new.
5) Once booted into the Win10 installer off of the USB flash drive, follow the prompts to install Win10 onto the SSD. Fairly straight-forward.
5B) IF YOU DON'T WANT TO USE AN MS ONLINE ACCOUNT FOR YOUR WINDOWS LOGIN, DISCONNECT THE INTERNET AND WIFI before installing Win10. Once it finished installation, and gets you to the desktop, PLUG IN THE INTERNET. It will then continue to download apps and drivers and stuff. (Need that video driver, mostly.)
6) Once you finish installing drivers, and also going to Start Menu, Settings, Update, and doing Windows Update until there are no more updates, then let it "settle" for an hour or two to finish up.
7) Reboot, and you should have a working Win10 PC! Congratulations!

 

[seamorton]

You're really, really, over-thinking this. This does not involve your original Windows 10 installation DVD in any way. Thanks for the update clearing this up for me. I'm beginning to get the picture.

You deserve a medal/award of some kind for putting up with this senile citizen. Excellent that was fast. Once I get things sorted out The information you posted is what/where I've been hoping for and looking forward to getting started with the build shortly. SM USAF 62-66

 

[VirtualLarry]

NP. Feel free to ask again if you have any more issues.

 

[seamorton]

NP. Feel free to ask again if you have any more issues.

I'll post an update as it goes

 

[Arkaign]

Larry providing some excellent info there as usual.

Hey if you want to re-use the old HDD as a secondary storage drive, that can be handy for bulk storage or just to keep your most important stuff copied across both drives in the event one of them fails.

But for the purposes of installation, you want ONLY the new SSD hooked up. Otherwise Windows can install dependencies in the BCD which make the system unbootable if the HDD is later removed.

So to successfully get it set up, install W10 from your new v1909 USB stick on the SSD, then you can hook up the HDD as a secondary drive, tap F10 on bootup to enter BIOS, and make sure it's set to boot to the SSD first.

Once in Windows you can take ownership of the old user profile folder, copy anything you want off of it to the SSD, then open an admin. Command prompt and type diskpart, enter, list disk, enter, select disk (number of the HDD listed from the list disk command that corresponds to the old HDD), clean, enter, exit, enter, exit, enter.

This will utterly clean all the old partitions off the drive in a way that disk management cannot. Then open up disk management, it will tell you that you have an uninitialized disk, and let you initialize it. Then you can make a fresh, clean, contiguous NTFS partition on the old HDD

Sounds way more complicated than it is. And if you don't need the old HDD whatsoever, no problem. Just whatever you do, make sure the SSD is the only drive connected during Windows setup.

 

[seamorton]

At this time, would like to setup this refurb with a single SSD, if all goes right. Most of all the desktop PCs I have are with a single HDD.

However, your suggestion sounds like something I may try to do on an older desktop pc that has one HDD with win 7 pro installed. Thinking about using the HDD in that unit as the refurb is rather limited internal space. Most of all usage is primarily home and this case can hold extra HDD's without any trouble.

May look into trying to doing just that with the Home Desktop for a future project.

Thanks for the input. Hoping to see if I can pull off this refurb and upgrade it to to the SSD. SM