have you tried using the reinstall option on Windows? I think you can make a clean install with it, just search under recovery, reset PC or something?

don't think you really need to backup the license, if you are connected to the internet it will activate automatically if it was before, MS saves that info on their servers...

Yes I did. Something along resetting the PC. It says it can't find the recovery environment or something like that.

Can't find the download page since i'm on a ipad, but try searching for windows 10 iso download, there should be a page where you can select to download a usb tool.

When you open this tool on the pc you want to reinstall you get a option to make a image of you're current pc or a new install for a other pc. Select current pc, but i don't know if this also backups the installed drivers.

My understanding is the licensing is tied to the hardware and stored on MS servers. You should be able to wipe the drive, do a clean install from an ISO, and the next time you connect the machine to the internet, it will automatically activate the OS (so long as it's currently activated).

edit: here's the ISO link seob mentioned:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-down … ad/windows10ISO

helpful link: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/4 … tall-windows-10

Cool. Well I took an image of the drive, extracted the licence key, exported the system report (which tells you the Ethernet is from Realtek and that sort of thing). Downloaded the media creator tool and it's making a USB stick. I'll risk it 😁

Awesome. I think you will learn you don't need to extract the license key next time. 😀

I remember testing this when the ISO came out. I had an old laptop that I gave the free upgrade to. Activated it, then wiped it out and did a clean install from the ISO and it just activated itself in the background without any prompting from me.

clueless1 wrote:

Awesome. I think you will learn you don't need to extract the license key next time. 😀

I remember testing this when the ISO came out. I had an old laptop that I gave the free upgrade to. Activated it, then wiped it out and did a clean install from the ISO and it just activated itself in the background without any prompting from me.

I'm downloading two ISOs. The first one, recommended setting (Chinese language), and then I'll do another one with UK language. I wonder if that works.

Let us know. 😀 I've never messed with different language versions of the OS. Isn't that something you can just change in the OS without having to reinstall?

clueless1 wrote:

Let us know. 😀 I've never messed with different language versions of the OS. Isn't that something you can just change in the OS without having to reinstall?

I will see how the Chinese installation screen looks like and if I can read it / continue on 😀

Yup that worked 😁

Got that new Windows 10 Creators Update version installed and activated. 64 bit and it took English Great Britain without any issues. Happy days 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Yup that worked 😁

Got that new Windows 10 Creators Update version installed and activated. 64 bit and it took English Great Britain without any issues. Happy days 😀

Nice to hear

This is the unit if anyone is interested: http://www.banggood.com/Cenovo-Mini-PC-II-Win … ?rmmds=category

It will likely replace my desktop PC that drives my TV and acts as my file server. I will measure the power difference, but I expect it to be substantial.

A nice surprise, despite the datasheet mentioning Fast Ethernet, it actually has Gigabit Ethernet installed.

Media playback is good, for Chrome I got an extension so that YouTube plays in H264 and gets accelerated by the GPU.

The graphics card is capable of some retro gaming. The display scaling is a bit flaky. Aspect ratio scaling only works in games, if you set the desktop resolution to match the game (1024 x 768 for example).

gotta love the Cenovo "brand".

luckybob wrote:

gotta love the Cenovo "brand".

Just a step below Menovo.

That unit would make a good firewall with one more NIC. I guess you could put a USB one on there, then install pfSense or IPFire and you've got a powerful IDS.

Then there is Lenovo.

Some more findings with this platform.

For some reason, out of the box, only balanced power profile is present. This wasn't an issue, but I found that any USB hard drive would spin down after just a minute! It was unusable, especially when you drive a storage pool and the drives just spin up and down like crazy.

Turns out a simple registry key change resolves this. The "always on" profile becomes available and you can set the hard drive spin-down times. And indeed, it was set to 1 minute by default 😳

The Atom is a bit on the weak side. For a software RAID it's fast enough however, at least for reading. Mirrored and RAID 5 it saturated Gigabit Ethernet. But for writing onto RAID 5, 20 to 30 MB/s is the most it can do unfortunately.

I'm also having fun with the Intel graphics. It seems every implementation acts a bit different. This one will do 1:1 pixel mapping (letter boxed and pillar boxed at lower resolution games), but aspect ratio scaling won't work. But there is a workaround, set the desktop resolution to match the game (e.g. 1024 x 768) and it will scale aspect ratio correct which works for me.

My Leadtek USB TV tuner is a no go, they have pulled the drivers 🙁 The USB 5.1 sound card works great, has a stronger signal than the Sound Blaster Recon 3D I was using in the desktop PC.

Raid is going away. I see people moving to ZFS.

Or BtrFS. However, for either system to be relevant to protect against data corruption, you need ECC throughout.