Ask Paul: A Mini-Collection of Windows 10 Questions

While I’m working during our home swap in Europe, we just took a small side-trip to Venice, and I did mostly take that time off. We just flew back today (to Lyon, not to Dedham), so I’m just getting up to speed again. But here is small collection of the very many emails I’ve received in the past day or so. Suffice to say, the email volume has been fairly impossible to deal with since Windows 10 shipped last week.

D. Lewis asks:

Do you know how to disable auto-play advertisements in Edge? I like the browser, but am starting to avoid using it due to the random blurts of advertisement. It is disconcerting.

Answer:

The problem is that Edge doesn’t yet support a planned extensibility feature that will let developers create add-ons for the browser, including ad blockers. (And use existing Chrome add-ons too.) For now, all you can really do is turn off Adobe Flash (in advanced settings) or just use another browser.

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David A. asks:

With Xbox one game streaming to Windows 10 is Microsoft also working on PC game streaming to Xbox One in the near future?

Answer:

Yes. No ETA, but it’s coming.

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David A. asks:

I always build my computers. I have all 6 of my workstations upgraded to Windows 10 now. But what happens in a few years when I want to upgrade my computers again and replace all internal components? Will I have to then purchase Windows 10 licenses on all of them? I really hope that is not the case and I can just do a phone activation. Thank you for your response.

Answer:

It will work just like it does today. If you change enough, you will need to phone activate.

But let me expand on this one a bit. I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately, as you might imagine, and this represents my theory—not a fact, just a theory—about how I expect things to work. It goes like this…

With the free Windows 10 upgrade, Microsoft has used the language “lifetime of the device” to describe the scope of support for that upgrade. Despite the resulting confusion, I believe this term is easily explained. And it’s both logical and, in retrospect, obvious.

It goes like so. If you got the Windows 10 upgrade for free (i.e. did not actually buy it) …

You are not getting a free upgrade to Windows 10.

Your PC is getting a free upgrade to Windows 10.

And Windows 10 will be supported on that PC for the lifetime of that device. Not for your lifetime.

That is, if you give away or sell that PC, the Windows 10 license goes with it. You can’t keep it, and you can’t transfer it to another PC down the road. It’s tied to the PC, not to you.

As I wrote in Windows 10 Tip: Associate Your PC with Your Free Windows 10 License, when you upgrade to Windows 10, the hardware ID of that PC is stored in Windows Store. Not your Microsoft account, the hardware ID of the PC. So if you or anyone else later decides to clean install Windows 10 on that PC, it will work fine. This isn’t about you. It’s about your PC.

I would imagine that some of you are thinking, sure, Paul. That’s obvious. But it’s not. And it seems that the Windows 10 EULA in fact could refute this. I’m curious what people think about this one.

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Ivey H. asks:

Can I get Movie Maker for 10 ?

Answer:

Movie Maker is still available as part of Windows Essentials, which works fine in Windows 10. You can find it here: http://get.live.com

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M. Holly asks:

I’m interested in doing a clean install of Windows 10. I have my hard drive partitioned  with two drives (“C-Drive” for system files and “M-drive” for my documents (e.g. Office files, photos, music etc.). I regularly use win7 to produce a “windowsImageBackup” of the partition “C-drive”. Can I arrange for a clean install of Win10, that impacts ONLY on the partition “C-drive”.

A:

Yeah, that should work fine—assuming you follow my instructions—and then you can configure the Windows 10 user folders (Documents, whatever) to point to M: if you want. Obviously, it makes sense to back up this drive or even physically disconnect it just in case. But I can’t imagine Windows 10 screwing with that at all.

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I’ll come up for air soon. 🙂