Install On Empty HDD?

[Dipsy]

Just finished signing up, downloading and burning a Win10 disk. I have a HDD that has Win7 on it and I'd like to format it and use the drive for Win10. That way I won't screw up my Win8.1 install and can switch back and forth by switching drives.

 

[Trouble]

Yep... that is an excellent way to set things up for a Preview version such as this.
Just make sure that the drive you intend to perform the install on, is the only drive in the system (connected / powered) at the time of the install. That will prevent the Tech Preview from messing with your 8 boot files.
After you're done just reconnect all drives.
Then you just use F10 or F12 or whichever function key brings up the boot menu on your board and pick which hard disk to boot from.
Good think'n Dipsy and welcome to the forum.

 

[Dipsy]

Thanks Trouble. I'll get busy installing right now. It's on a 2nd computer so it won't matter if it doesn't work perfectly.

 

[Dipsy]

Installed on empty HDD with no issues at all. It was pretty much just a normal Windows install and so far everything is running without problems. Installed Windows Live Mail and my email accounts and newsgroup accounts both of which are operating normally. Installed Firefox and it too is running normally with all of my add ons and bookmarks imported from a flash drive. So far I've not encountered any difficulties but I've got to investigate customizing the start menu. At the moment I wouldn't guess I'm running Windows 10 and not Windows 8.1. So far all is cool.

 

[Trouble]

Good job.
Yes you'll need to take some time and investigate it properly. There is some minor customizing you can do with the start menu, resizing tiles, unpinning them, dragging items from the all apps menu on to the start tile portion.
And of course the new Task View button which allows you to add virtual desktops. The fact that modern apps all run in windows now and that when you click the "X" they actually close..... all the way closed which is a nice change from dragging them to the bottom of the screen and waiting for them to flip.
Other than that and perhaps a few more minor items, you're pretty close to 100% correct in your assessment it's Windows 8, but.... what it should have been to begin with, without the past couple years of suffering.

 

[Dipsy]

That was kind of a pain pulling an app to the bottom and waiting for it to flip to close it completely but looks like it's fixed now. I've resized the picture icons to small and changed the color and the start menu looks a lot better now.

 

[Trouble]

Did the same thing myself. I prefer the gray to the default blue that showed up initially.

 

[Old Guy Geek]

I installed it on an existing dual boot system with Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8.1 Pro on an SSD. It installed perfectly and kept all my programs and files. The only problem was that my dual boot didn't work. I simply went to the computer properties and it still listed my dual boot. I changed the default back to Window 7 and it worked great.

 

[Trouble]

I installed it on an existing dual boot system with Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 8.1 Pro on an SSD. It installed perfectly and kept all my programs and files

So does that mean you upgraded your 8.1 Pro install to Windows 10 Tech Preview or have you now got yourself a triple boot system?
I pose this question because of your comment about it having "kept all my programs and files".