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Windows 10 installation options
On a new PC that arrives with Windows 10 preinstalled, all the work of setup and activation is done at
the factory. Your only responsibility is to go through the out of box experience (OOBE) by creating a
new user account or signing into an existing one.
Upgrades and clean installs, by contrast, require a full setup, which proceeds in multiple phases. If
you’ve made it this far into this book, I don’t need to tell you how Windows Setup works. Instead, allow
me to point out some interesting options you’ll encounter along the way.
The simplest option by far is an in-place upgrade. For larger deployments, you can automate this
process on devices running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT),
System Center Configuration Manager, or an alternative software distribution tool. (You can read more
about that in Chapter 4.)
For a single device, using Windows Update to initiate the Windows 10 upgrade is a perfectly
reasonable choice. During the preview period and for the first few months after the official release of
Windows 10 in July 2015, Microsoft delivered a utility program called Get Windows 10 to all eligible
PCs. This add-in placed an icon in the notification area offering the user the opportunity to reserve an
upgrade. Beginning in late 2015, Microsoft began offering the upgrade option as an Optional update
and plans to deliver the installer as a Recommended update beginning in early 2016.
Figure 3-5, for example, shows the update ready to run on a Windows 7 PC.
FIGURE 3-5 Despite the seemingly vast difference in version numbers, upgrades from Windows 7 to Windows 10
are fully supported through Windows Update.
CHAPTER 3 Installation and activation 41