Dell Inspiron Micro Desktop €149 @ DELL Ireland

somebody_else

I had the same problem.
It took a while to resolve as I was unable to upgrade to 10 due to lack of space on hdd.

I re-imaged it using Win 8.1 with Bing CD blowing recovery partition etc.
With that installed I had 20 Gb of free space and was able to upgrade to 10.

And then used some tool (can't remember what it is called) I got installation key for Windows 10.

And then I did clean install of Win 10 ;-)

It just take time till 3 am.

Tom

maximus02 wrote: »

I have been trying to do a clean install of Win 10 but the install is looking for a windows product key.

I can't see any mention of a product key on my device, no sticker.

Anyway know how I can find my Windows product key?

Thanks in advance.
Max

degsie

maximus02 wrote: »

I have been trying to do a clean install of Win 10 but the install is looking for a windows product key.

I can't see any mention of a product key on my device, no sticker.

Anyway know how I can find my Windows product key?

Thanks in advance.
Max

You need to UPGRADE from win 8.1 first to ensure that win 10 is activated. Thereafter you can do a clean install and you won't be asked for a product key.

quarryman

somebody_else wrote: »

And then used some tool (can't remember what it is called) I got installation key for Windows 10.

Jellybean

54and56

OK, so I'm trying to upgrade to Win 10 but I don't have enough space. I've deleted MS Office and pretty much all the Dell bloatware and I've also run Disk Cleanup which cleared 330mb but I'm still the guts of 6GB short. It's saying I either need to free up 6gb from the C drive or attach another drive which has at least 9gb free.

Where to from here? I've got a 32gb MicroSD card I can stick into a USB adapter and attach that. Will that be seen as an external HDD and if so does it need to be formatted in any particular way first?

EDIT: I stuck the 32GB MicroSD card into the USB adapter and attached that to the machine. I then cancelled the Win 10 update and restarted it. This time when asking me for an external drive which had 9GB spare the drop down showed the 32GB MicroSD card which I chose and it's off and running now. It looks like it might take a very long time to complete the upgrade (Only at 2% after 5 minutes) but that's not an issue. As long as it upgrades ok I'll be happy.

I see some people are upgrading to Win 10 and then doing a fresh install of Win 10. I assume that is to clear up some space from the HDD? Can anyone confirm that's the reason and how much space is cleared up? I won't be upgrading the 32 SSD as this will primarily be a Kodi/Netflix/Chrome/Minecraft box but I will likely upgrade the RAM to 8GB. Given my intended usage should I also do a fresh install of Win 10?

Mahogany Gaspipe

Just received mine and I'm not too happy with it.

It seems to be extremely slow surfing the web. My connection is via a meteor mobile BB hotspot (which grant it aint the fastest connection); however it will stream youtube, albeit it with some buffering, and open webpages on my old laptop.

The new Dell however cannot seem to even open youtube and a few attempts to download Chrome have failed. I cant even use the Inspiron to post here!

Has anyone any suggest as to why this maybe be?
I'm really disappointed.

somebody_else

Wait till all updates are downloaded and applied or stop it.

Tom

Mahogany Gaspipe wrote: »

Just received mine and I'm not too happy with it.

It seems to be extremely slow surfing the web. My connection is via a meteor mobile BB hotspot (which grant it aint the fastest connection); however it will stream youtube, albeit it with some buffering, and open webpages on my old laptop.

The new Dell however cannot seem to even open youtube and a few attempts to download Chrome have failed. I cant even use the Inspiron to post here!

Has anyone any suggest as to why this maybe be?
I'm really disappointed.

somebody_else

Nope it was Belarc Advisor
completely forgot about Jellybean !

Tom

Also You can use R&W software to pull key from UEFI/BIOS.

Tom

quarryman wrote: »

Jellybean

maximus02

Well I'm confused now!

When I fired up the box for the first time yesterday I started the installation. During the installation I was given the option of installing Windows 10 so I thought well why not?

Everything seemed to go ok (if slowly) and Windows 10 installed ok. When I looked at my disk space I saw that I had 4.3 GB free space remaining and 24.4GB used up.

So I figured the best thing to do was to do a fresh install of Windows 10.

I used the tool at:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=616447

to download onto a USB stick and ran the program.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this morning I was asked during the installation for a product key. I used Magicaljellybean and Belarc advisor to obtain this key.

I entered the key and Windows said this was an invalid key. I checked and rechecked 4 times that I was entering the correct key but no luck. It wouldn't work.

There is no option to skip entering this key.

What now? I guess I could make space on the drive but I'd like to do a fresh install.

Thanks

BeepBeep67

maximus02 wrote: »

Well I'm confused now!

When I fired up the box for the first time yesterday I started the installation. During the installation I was given the option of installing Windows 10 so I thought well why not?

Everything seemed to go ok (if slowly) and Windows 10 installed ok. When I looked at my disk space I saw that I had 4.3 GB free space remaining and 24.4GB used up.

So I figured the best thing to do was to do a fresh install of Windows 10.

I used the tool at:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=616447

to download onto a USB stick and ran the program.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this morning I was asked during the installation for a product key. I used Magicaljellybean and Belarc advisor to obtain this key.

I entered the key and Windows said this was an invalid key. I checked and rechecked 4 times that I was entering the correct key but no luck. It wouldn't work.

There is no option to skip entering this key.

What now? I guess I could make space on the drive but I'd like to do a fresh install.

Thanks

Can you roll back to just after the Win10 install?
Then run diskclean as an administrator (search for diskclean, right click run as administrator), this should show previous windows installations, tick the box and run the cleaner.
NB: you will not be able to restore back to 8.1 once you do this.

somebody_else

Hi
Could post link to iso with Wind 8.1 with Bing to do fresh install.
It will not ask for key as it will pull it from UEFI/BIOS.

Tom

Headshot

Headshot wrote: »

What OS is every body using?

Im tempted not to bother with Windows and go down the XBMC route or something. I basically want this as a media player. Anyone got suggestions?

You can just run kodi on windows but still have the option of using it as a windows machine if you want from time to time.

mossym

Je_suis_Jean wrote: »

OK, so I'm trying to upgrade to Win 10 but I don't have enough space. I've deleted MS Office and pretty much all the Dell bloatware and I've also run Disk Cleanup which cleared 330mb but I'm still the guts of 6GB short. It's saying I either need to free up 6gb from the C drive or attach another drive which has at least 9gb free.

Where to from here? I've got a 32gb MicroSD card I can stick into a USB adapter and attach that. Will that be seen as an external HDD and if so does it need to be formatted in any particular way first?

EDIT: I stuck the 32GB MicroSD card into the USB adapter and attached that to the machine. I then cancelled the Win 10 update and restarted it. This time when asking me for an external drive which had 9GB spare the drop down showed the 32GB MicroSD card which I chose and it's off and running now. It looks like it might take a very long time to complete the upgrade (Only at 2% after 5 minutes) but that's not an issue. As long as it upgrades ok I'll be happy.

I see some people are upgrading to Win 10 and then doing a fresh install of Win 10. I assume that is to clear up some space from the HDD? Can anyone confirm that's the reason and how much space is cleared up? I won't be upgrading the 32 SSD as this will primarily be a Kodi/Netflix/Chrome/Minecraft box but I will likely upgrade the RAM to 8GB. Given my intended usage should I also do a fresh install of Win 10?

how did this method work out? going to do the same myself tonight, mine arrived today

quarryman

Je_suis_Jean wrote: »

OK, so I'm trying to upgrade to Win 10 but I don't have enough space. I've deleted MS Office and pretty much all the Dell bloatware and I've also run Disk Cleanup which cleared 330mb but I'm still the guts of 6GB short. It's saying I either need to free up 6gb from the C drive or attach another drive which has at least 9gb free.

Where to from here? I've got a 32gb MicroSD card I can stick into a USB adapter and attach that. Will that be seen as an external HDD and if so does it need to be formatted in any particular way first?

EDIT: I stuck the 32GB MicroSD card into the USB adapter and attached that to the machine. I then cancelled the Win 10 update and restarted it. This time when asking me for an external drive which had 9GB spare the drop down showed the 32GB MicroSD card which I chose and it's off and running now. It looks like it might take a very long time to complete the upgrade (Only at 2% after 5 minutes) but that's not an issue. As long as it upgrades ok I'll be happy.

I see some people are upgrading to Win 10 and then doing a fresh install of Win 10. I assume that is to clear up some space from the HDD? Can anyone confirm that's the reason and how much space is cleared up? I won't be upgrading the 32 SSD as this will primarily be a Kodi/Netflix/Chrome/Minecraft box but I will likely upgrade the RAM to 8GB. Given my intended usage should I also do a fresh install of Win 10?

Disabling hibernation will get you another 2GB back. (Assuming this is the size of the RAM you have installed).

Mahogany Gaspipe

somebody_else wrote: »

Wait till all updates are downloaded and applied or stop it.

Tom

Yeah I think I was a little too early in my judgement, it is running fine now!

Mahogany Gaspipe

Also I'm never to sure how much I can take the knife the uninstall programs . Can all of the Dell programs be uninstalled?

styron

Mahogany Gaspipe wrote: »

Also I'm never to sure how much I can take the knife the uninstall programs . Can all of the Dell programs be uninstalled?

PC Decrapifier was excellent for removing bloatware en bloc. I haven't needed to use it since the original developer Karen Kenworthy died though, so can't vouch for how well maintained it is (just ran it now - no questionable candidates for removal).

CCleaner and/or Wise Disk Cleaner, used carefully, keep space at a premium by removing junk files - the latter frees up plenty of sludge after MS updates: vital for small OS drives like these. The downside of removing the various update installer detritus - if updates are needed again you download from scratch.

theShire

BeepBeep67 wrote: »

All set up for MrsBB, with 8GB of RAM, deleted the windows.old folder to get back about 12GB of the HD and have a 128GB USB3 flash arriving this week.

How did you delete the windows.old folder? I'm getting file access denied when I try

degsie

theShire wrote: »

How did you delete the windows.old folder? I'm getting file access denied when I try

http://lifehacker.com/reclaim-disk-space-after-windows-10-update-by-deleting-1720934718

styron

Previous versions - an option under Disk Cleanup from Admin Tools or typing it into the search box:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/how-remove-windows-old-folder

BeepBeep67

theShire wrote: »

How did you delete the windows.old folder? I'm getting file access denied when I try

See post 343

theShire

Thanks for the info, I went searching for answers and used the disk cleanup tool and windows.old is now gone.

OS drive is showing as 23.6gb used of 28.7gb

Using windirstat its showing as 13.6gb used

Any ideas where the 10gb of data is hiding?

Edit: windirstat showing 10gb 'unknown' used space.
Now how to get rid of it?

54and56

mossym wrote: »

how did this method work out? going to do the same myself tonight, mine arrived today

Not so well so far. I left it just after my post this afternoon and went back to work. Just in now and the box LED was flashing amber with a green/blank screen. Tried to wake it up via pressing the space bar etc without success so powered it off using the power on/off button. It came back to life with a green screen and the Dell circular logo. then it rebooted itself and has now resumed the Win 10 upgrade. It's currently at 39%.

The fact 5-6 hours have elapsed however does not mean it's taking that long. It may have requested a reboot soon after I left and just sat there for the afternoon waiting for me to action the request.

It's just clicked up to 44% just now so I'm guessing it will finish in an hour or so. I'll report back!!

54and56

and now 71%!!!

styron

theShire wrote: »

Thanks for the info, I went searching for answers and used the disk cleanup tool and windows.old is now gone.

OS drive is showing as 23.6gb used of 28.7gb

Using windirstat its showing as 13.6gb used

Any ideas where the 10gb of data is hiding?

Edit: windirstat showing 10gb 'unknown' used space.
Now how to get rid of it?

Try disk management for the number of partitions on the drive - usually a recovery partition for factory image reset and much smaller diagnostic tools one.

Also check size of system restore.

I recommended earlier Wise Disc Cleaner - under both the Common Cleaner and Slimming System tabs it remove superfluous windows components and install residues.

**Use with care** = personal disclaimer ... your F-ups (however unlikely) are your own :pac:

54and56

mossym wrote: »

how did this method work out? going to do the same myself tonight, mine arrived today

All Win 10 organised now. Was relatively painless once I stuck on the 32GB USB drive. My fault entirely that it took all afternoon/evening. I was distracted with other stuff.

After the update I have 12.9GB free out of an available 28.7GB on the C drive. Is that a good result? Is there much more I can do other than running CCleaner or a fresh install of Win 10 to maximise performance? (I'll be updating the RAM to 8GB in due course)

quarryman

I fooked up my Windows 8 install by trying to delete the recovery partition. Luckily I kept the CD Key.

Can someone tell me exactly what version of Windows 8 or 8.1 is installed on the machine so I can get up and running again?

I grabbed one but when I went to install it told me it didn't match the CD Key.

Mahogany Gaspipe

quarryman wrote: »

I fooked up my Windows 8 install by trying to delete the recovery partition. Luckily I kept the CD Key.

Can someone tell me exactly what version of Windows 8 or 8.1 is installed on the machine so I can get up and running again?

I grabbed one but when I went to install it told me it didn't match the CD Key.

Window 8.1 (x64)

quarryman

Mahogany Gaspipe wrote: »

Window 8.1 (x64)

Thanks. I tried that and no joy. I used the Windows media create tool and tried Win 8.1 Single Language and Win 8.1 normal and the cd key works with neither.

Do Dell have some sort of OEM windows ISO?

edit: ah, it seems the Win 8.1 version is a stupid Windows 8.1 "with bing" edition. Our CD keys won't work with any ISO downloadable from Microsoft :mad:

edit2: i ended up getting an ISO of stupid win8.1 with bing on torrent from some site. Seem to be back on track win Win10 downloading again now...

54and56

quarryman wrote: »

edit2: i ended up getting an ISO of stupid win8.1 with bing on torrent from some site. Seem to be back on track win Win10 downloading again now...

Did you get any sleep???

ondafly

so also received mine yesterday - had some fun with it too.

Tested the following :
-Sky Go - works perfectly
-Netflix - works perfectly
-Kodi - works perfectly including all the addons i like to use
-Steam Streaming - quickly streamed Arma 3 from my gaming machine to confirm it worked

Point of note - as its Windows 8.1 with Bing - you cannot RDP to the box without a few changes ! so I installed the following to enable it

https://github.com/binarymaster/rdpwrap/releases/

I had one slip up installed partition wizard to get rid of that stupid 8gigs of backup, but it screwed up the machine, but I was able to restore it back. I now need to find a decent solution for my Harmony remote, thinking either a FLIRC or a CEC inline adapter for the hdmi.