Windows 10 Pro - USB vs Official Download

cereberus · 14 Aug 2022

MisterEd said:

Windows XP had 3 service packs and Windows 7 had 2 service packs. For some it made sense to slipstream in any service packs if needed. For example, if you bough a CD with Windows XP with SP2 it sped things up if slipstreamed in SP3 and burned a new CD. That was beyond what most people knew how to do so they stuck with the original disk and installed or reinstalled with it.

With Windows 10 major updates came twice a year until starting with this year when there will be one major update. It save a lot of time to always start with the latest release and make your own USB flash drive. For example, if you bought either a DVD or flash drive with Windows 10 in 2018 and installed it today you would have a long wait for it to complete four years worth of updates. If you started with the latest release 21H2 you would have at most 10 months of updates.

Microsoft has made it fairly easy for the average person to make the media for the latest release of Windows 10. Anyone that doesn't take advantage of that is just making more work for themselves.

Even then, cumulative updates mean you only need to install latest one, not 10 months of cumulative updates.

I though even Windows 7 went over to cumulative updates a couple of years back rather than endless updates but never tried it.

Bree · 14 Aug 2022

cereberus said:

Even then, cumulative updates mean you only need to install latest one, not 10 months of cumulative updates.

Yes, the latest CU should be the only on you need.

I though even Windows 7 went over to cumulative updates a couple of years back rather than endless updates but never tried it.

For W7 the 'Monthly rollup update' seems to have started in 2016. I still have one W7 machine in active use, and that got them all up to end of life for W7 in Jan. 2020. Works much the same as a CU does in W10. Those enterprises who have paid for an ESU subscription still get monthly rollups to this day.

August 9, 2022—KB5016676 (Monthly Rollup) Windows 7 ESU

MisterEd · 14 Aug 2022

Bree said:

Yes, the latest CU should be the only on you need.

For W7 the 'Monthly rollup update' seems to have started in 2016. I still have one W7 machine in active use, and that got them all up to end of life for W7 in Jan. 2020. Works much the same as a CU does in W10. Those enterprises who have paid for an ESU subscription still get monthly rollups to this day.

August 9, 2022—KB5016676 (Monthly Rollup) Windows 7 ESU

I have one computer with Windows 7 that I had to disable Windows updates. Maybe back in 2019 updates started assuming the CPU supports SSE2. The computer's CPU doesn't support SSE2 so some updates crash. I have to use system restore to boot again. Even some software started requiring SSE2 support. BTW, the CPU is an Athlon XP 2800+ (thoroughbred) that I bought in 2002.

hsehestedt · 14 Aug 2022

MisterEd said:

I have one computer with Windows 7 that I had to disable Windows updates. Maybe back in 2019 updates started assuming the CPU supports SSE2. The computer's CPU doesn't support SSE2 so some updates crash. I have to use system restore to boot again. Even some software started requiring SSE2 support. BTW, the CPU is an Athlon XP 2800+ (thoroughbred) that I bought in 2002.

Just out of curiosity, are you running Win 7 on that system just due to preference or have you tried to see if it can run 10 successfully?

Megahertz · 15 Aug 2022

hsehestedt said:

Just out of curiosity, are you running Win 7 on that system just due to preference or have you tried to see if it can run 10 successfully?

I still run Win 7 as my main OS as I think it is a better OS (It has everything I need, I know how to use it and never had any issue with it.)
To keep it up to date I use Single file with all updates - Simplix - Windows 7 Forums

hsehestedt · 15 Aug 2022

Megahertz said:

I still run Win 7 as my main OS as I think it is a better OS (It has everything I need, I know how to use it and never had any issue with it.)
To keep it up to date I use Single file with all updates - Simplix - Windows 7 Forums

Got it. Thanks!

MisterEd · 16 Aug 2022

hsehestedt said:

Just out of curiosity, are you running Win 7 on that system just due to preference or have you tried to see if it can run 10 successfully?

I have 5 desktop computers and 2 laptop computers. This computer with the AMD Athlon 2800+ CPU with 2GB RAM is one of my older ones so Windows 7 is the best it can do. If I try to boot the Windows 10 (2015 release) on a USB flash drive it hangs on the blue background with a Windows 10 logo. Don't forget this is a 32-bit CPU that doesn't support SSE2. Even Windows 7 updates starting in 2019 requires that. Also, Windows 10 requirements implies Windows 8 requirements. Windows 8 definitely requires SSE2.

I Have a laptop that I bought in 2004. It has an AMD Athlon64 3400+ CPU which does support SSE2. Windows 7 works fine on it. Since it supports SSE2 it has gotten all the updates for Windows 7 including the Edge browser. Unfortunately, it will not run Windows 10. I could force it to do a clean install of Windows 10 but it was missing a bunch of critical drivers. I spent many hours trying but could never find working drivers for it.

I have 3 desktop computers and 1 laptop computer that run Windows 10. One these desktop computers will even run Windows 11 when I am ready to do so.

The last desktop computer I haven't mentioned so far is running Windows XP Pro. It has an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ CPU. It only has 500MB RAM so I haven't even tried to install Windows 7 on it.

hsehestedt · 16 Aug 2022

MiterEd,

I'm learning something new from you. Is the lack of that instruction set unique to AMD CPUs of that era? I have in my grubby little hands right now a receipt for a laptop I purchased in 2010 with an Intel i5 450M CPU. That system runs both Win 10 and Win 11 beautifully. Not a single bang in device manager. The specs indicate that it supports Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2.

For Win 11 I do have to install with the unsupported workarounds because it has legacy BIOS which also implies no secure boot, no TPM, and obviously an unsupported CPU.

EDIT: Found more on the instruction set and features of that CPU:

MMX
SSE
SSE2
SSE3
SSSE3
SSE4.1
SSE4.2
EIST
Intel 64
XD bit
TXT
VT-x
VT-d
HTT
Turbo Boost
AES-NI
Smart Cache

MisterEd · 16 Aug 2022

SSE2 was introduced into Intel chips with the Pentium 4 in 2001 and AMD Athlon64 processors in 2003.

Based on this you can see how the 1st CPU I have below came out too soon for SSE2. The 2nd CPU has SSE2 but that was not enough. Surprisingly, it didn't work well with an upgrade to Windows Vista. I think the 1GB RAM wasn't enough. When I upgraded the RAM to 2GB that was enough so it would run Windows 7. Being a laptop that came out in 2004 it just didn't have support for drivers that would work in Windows 10. Note the video driver I use with Windows 7 was actually the one that was for Windows XP. That was the end because other Windows XP drivers would not work in Windows 10.

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2002)
Features
• MMX instructions
• Extensions to MMX
• 3DNow! technology
• Extensions to 3DNow!
• SSE / Streaming SIMD Extensions

AMD Athlon64 3400+ (2004)
Features
• MMX technology
• 3DNow!
• SSE
• SSE2
• AMD64 technology
• Enhanced Virus Protection

The following two AMD CPUs are 10 or more years old but are advanced enough for Windows 10.

AMD Phenom II X4 960T (2010)
Features
• MMX
• 3DNow!
• SSE
• SSE2
• SSE3
• SSE4a
• Advanced Bit Manipulation
• AMD64 technology
• AMD-V (virtualization) technology

AMD FX-8350 (2012)
Extensions & Technologies
• MMX instructions
• Extensions to MMX
• SSE / Streaming SIMD Extensions
• SSE2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
• SSE3 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
• SSSE3 / Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
• SSE4 / SSE4.1 + SSE4.2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 4
• SSE4a
• AES / Advanced Encryption Standard instructions
• AVX / Advanced Vector Extensions
• BMI1 / Bit Manipulation instructions 1
• F16C / 16-bit Floating-Point conversion instructions
• FMA3 / 3-operand Fused Multiply-Add instructions
• FMA4 / 4-operand Fused Multiply-Add instructions
• TBM / Trailing Bit Manipulation instructions
• XOP / eXtended Operations instructions
• AMD64 / AMD 64-bit technology
• AMD-V / AMD Virtualization technology
• Turbo Core 3.0 technology

MisterEd · 16 Aug 2022

Compare these CPUs with the older ones. They are much faster than the older ones. They work very well with Windows 10. I started with the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X in 2017 but upgraded it to a AMD Ryzen 7 3700X in 2021. I did this because the Ryzen 7 1700X was not supported by Windows 11 but the Ryzen 7 3700X was. I also upgraded the GTX 1060 6GB GPU to an RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GPU. Unfortunately, after I upgraded to Windows 11 Pro I didn't like it so I went back to Windows 10 Pro. Oh well. I will eventually upgrade to Windows 11 but at least my computer will be ready when I am

AMD Ryzen 7 1700X (2017)
Extensions & Technologies
• MMX instructions
• Extensions to MMX
• SSE / Streaming SIMD Extensions
• SSE2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
• SSE3 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
• SSSE3 / Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
• SSE4 / SSE4.1 + SSE4.2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 4
• SSE4a
• AES / Advanced Encryption Standard instructions
• AVX / Advanced Vector Extensions
• AVX2 / Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0
• BMI / BMI1 + BMI2 / Bit Manipulation instructions
• F16C / 16-bit Floating-Point conversion instructions
• FMA3 / 3-operand Fused Multiply-Add instructions
• SHA / Secure Hash Algorithm extensions
• AMD64 / AMD 64-bit technology
• SMT / Simultaneous MultiThreading
• AMD-V / AMD Virtualization technology
• Precision Boost
• Extended Frequency Range
Security Features
• EVP / Enhanced Virus Protection
• SMAP / Supervisor Mode Access Prevention
• SMEP / Secure Mode Execution Protection

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (2019)
Extensions & Technologies
• MMX instructions
• Extensions to MMX
• SSE / Streaming SIMD Extensions
• SSE2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 2
• SSE3 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
• SSSE3 / Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
• SSE4 / SSE4.1 + SSE4.2 / Streaming SIMD Extensions 4
• SSE4a
• AES / Advanced Encryption Standard instructions
• AVX / Advanced Vector Extensions
• AVX2 / Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0
• BMI / BMI1 + BMI2 / Bit Manipulation instructions
• F16C / 16-bit Floating-Point conversion instructions
• FMA3 / 3-operand Fused Multiply-Add instructions
• SHA / Secure Hash Algorithm extensions
• AMD64 / AMD 64-bit technology
• SMT / Simultaneous MultiThreading
• Precision Boost 2
• AMD-V / AMD Virtualization technology
Security Features
• EVP / Enhanced Virus Protection
• SMAP / Supervisor Mode Access Prevention
• SMEP / Secure Mode Execution Protection

hsehestedt said:

MiterEd,

For Win 11 I do have to install with the unsupported workarounds because it has legacy BIOS which also implies no secure boot, no TPM, and obviously an unsupported CPU.

Even though I am not running Windows 11 on my Ryzen computer I am running both Window 11 Home and Windows 11 Pro as virtual machines using Hyper-V. Hyper-V supports both Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 so Windows 11 is supported. Note having an 8-core CPU and 32GB RAM make running a virtual machine easy,

BTW, you can install either Windows 11 Home or Pro without using a Microsoft account if you know how. I think whether to use a Microsoft account should be my decision not theirs.