windows – Page 4 – Kev's Development Toolbox

August 9, 2015

Windows 10 Activation Issues on Mac Parallels 9 and 10 for Bootcamp VMs

Parallels has a neat feature to allow you to create a VM from a bare metal install of Windows in the Bootcamp partition (rather than having it installed to a file representing a virtual disk on the host). This allows you to either natively boot straight from the Bootcamp partition, or boot in a VM running on a Mac OS X host.

For Windows 8.x, this worked fine even though Windows Activation saw the bare metal install and when running in the VM as two different installs. Previously one would activate as normal, and the other would require a call to the Microsoft number to get a new activation code. Once you had activated both, then you could boot either and both would be activated from one license.

On Windows 10 however, it looks like which ever you boot second, it sees the activation code already used on one of your Windows 10 devices, and then refuses to activate. This is discussed in this Parallels forum post here. So far it seems if you leave Windows 10 booted for ‘long enough’ eventually it will activate itself? I’m having this issue, so leaving my unactivated native boot up and running for a while to see whether it activates or not.

July 29, 2015

Can’t wait for your Windows 10 upgrade? Download it now.

If you ‘reserved’ your free upgrade to Windows 10 but you haven’t seen anything popup or appear to prompt you to install yet, if you really want to get it installed right now, Lifehacker have a link to the Windows 10 Media Creation tool which you can download and use to do an upgrade of 7 or 8.x to 10 right now.

July 28, 2015

Windows 10 – is it ready?

Only a day away from Windows 10 starting to rollout on July 29th, and people are wondering whether it’s really ready for release or not, or as The Register puts it, Microsoft are still playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with bugs before the actual release: “A number of nagging bugs have cropped up in the last few days that have some Windows 10 testers scratching their heads at just how an OS this raw can be considered production-ready.”

But if we’re prepared to accept’s Microsoft’s concept of ‘Windows as a Service’, this is all perfectly ok, because you’ll be getting a continual stream of Windows Updates to patch all the issues after the first release is pushed out. I’m not sure how this differs from any other Microsoft release of any prior release of Windows, but ok then, if you say so.

So your release forecast for tomorrow is: extremely buggy, with a very good chance of patches released later in the day.

July 13, 2015

Is Microsoft planning a ‘bait and switch’ with the ‘free’ upgrade to Windows 10?

There’s a lot of uncertainty around exactly what Microsoft are offering for the ‘free’ upgrade to Windows 10 that’s going to start rolling out on July 29th. winsupersite.com have a good collection of questions people are starting to ask about what is included in the upgrade offer.

An article in Forbes discussing some internal presentation slides that ComputerWorld obtained is suggesting that the ‘free’ upgrade may not turn out to be entirely free after all, as a cryptic statement from Microsoft states:

“Revenue allocated is deferred and recognized on a straight-line basis over the estimated period the software upgrades are expected to be provided by estimated device life…. [The estimated device life] can range from two to four years”

We can only speculate exactly what Microsoft means by this statement, but it implies the ‘free’ upgrade is only initially free, and thrn at some point during the lifetime of your installation, the cost will be recouped. Exactly how or on what timescale the cost is recouped is unclear, but this statement implies at some point you will be charged for your Windows 10 – possibly ransomware style (‘Pay $199 now to continue using Windows 10’), or maybe subscription style (a monthly subscription to keep the install active?) – at this point there’s not enough information to be able to say. But it does seem clear, we’re not getting Windows 10 for ‘free’.