Upgrade | SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

Windows 10 upgrade adventures–HP Stream 7 edition #Win10 #Upgrade #HPStream7

July 31, 2015 Giles Hamson 5 comments

So Windows 10 is out (RTM’d if we are allowed to use that term anymore) and as ever I like to upgrade my machines and live and breathe the new software… it is the best way to get used to the way things are going to be from now on…

I had dabbled with the insider preview but honestly time didn’t allow me to go into all the features properly.

As part of a whim late last year, I bought myself an HP Stream 7 for $79. As a Windows 8.1 machine, it was ok, but the screen was too small to be massively useful. For things like Netflix, Hulu, Plex etc… it was perfect however.

So what better machine to experiment with an upgrade…

Of course this wasn’t going to be easy… with only 32gb of storage and a low spec processor, it may not even work at all! However, with an update, I got the magic icon to reserve my copy, so why the heck not!

Attempt 1 – Command Line

So June 29th came and went and apparently it wasn’t my turn. After some discussions with my colleague Jin at work, he pointed me to this command line tool to force the upgrade:

wuauclt.exe /upgradenow

So I did exactly that and everything seemed great. Downloading files, checking system specs, then… failed!

It would appear that the 15gb of space I had on the device was not enough!

So I cleared a bunch of space (uninstalled Office 365, cleared down my OneDrive files etc…) and tried again. Same process…

Alas I had the same problem…

Attempt 2 – Reset the device

So I go into work the next day and Jin is there with his HP Stream 7 and a fancy new Windows 10 installation.

How? What? Huh?

It would appear that resetting the device back to factory defaults gave enough space to do the upgrade for him.

So I tried exactly that, but unlike him, I got a different experience…

I decided not to connect a Microsoft Account incase that used up more space with sync’s from other machines…

Ran the update process and all it did was update to the latest Windows 8.1 patches.

At this point, I had no space to install Windows 10 again.

Attempt 3 – Reset the device (Microsoft Account edition)

So I reset the device again, thinking I would just download the tool to run the upgrade instead.

This time, I use my Microsoft Account to login to my device and sudden voila! There is a new OS to install – wanna do it? Yeah I do!

It downloaded the files, ran the checks and started the process. It took approximately 2.5 hours but I am there, it works and initial impressions are awesome!

I will probably report back further on my progress but for now, I am going to enjoy my new HP Stream 7 Tablet Mode experience!

Categories: Work Tags: HP Stream 7, Tablet Mode, Upgrade, Windows 10

The #Office365 Upgrade Experience

May 23, 2013 Giles Hamson 1 comment

So the magic email finally arrived recently. Microsoft have finished upgrading my Office 365 (2010 version) to the new 2013 (Wave 15) version (both the E1 and P1 plans that I have).

Now as some of you know already, I have created a new Office 365 tenant for my partner who has recently entered the world of HR consulting. It is just a small endeavour at the moment whilst we sort out other personal to do’s like weddings etc…

Anyway, we needed a good email system, Lync is useful and a site for document collaboration. Office 365 fits the bill perfectly.

I also created a very basic public website and sorted out all the DNS entries etc…

Anyway, enough of the background stuff – lets talk about the upgrade went?

Well Exchange & Lync is all done for you behind the scenes. This worked perfectly for us and the new Outlook Web App interface is great (very similar to Outlook.com) and now includes Lync presence information with the ability to control your online status.

Lync is of course changed in look and feel and the user interface is certainly a lot nicer than Lync 2010 and Office Communicator 2007 R2.

It is nice to see this all working together. More on this in a minute!

Now for the interesting bit – The SharePoint Online upgrade:

So logging into any of your site collections you will see the following message on the top of the site:

Clicking on Start now takes you to this…

And given that I have a pretty much blank sites at this point (a few document libraries here and there), I went straight for the upgrade.

Even after this warning, you still get the chance to stop the process:

In my case, for the main site collection, there seemed to be a warning around task lists, which presumably is not upgraded from the 2010 version, since they are all new in 2013 with great integration with Microsoft Project 2013.

Now after all that, go back to the root of the site collection and you are done!

A few things to note

This needs to be done on every site collection. By every site collection, they mean every one – including:

Team Site
My Site (each individual)

My photo had to be re-uploaded but otherwise details stayed the same. The photo also took quite sometime to propogate to Lync and Exchange, however this is a huge improvement. One picture to fit them all!

My Site Host

Interesting this had to be upgraded separately to the My Site Content

Although technically this makes sense, I know that some of the non-technical business using Office 365 won’t understand this.

Upgraded without issue but left old search symbol in place.

Interestingly, search box is no longer centred but the page layout could be updated as required.

That is about it, so nothing major to an experienced SharePoint and Office 365 techy like myself but I know that a number of my friends who use their Office 365 for their small business will be giving me a call when the time comes.

Anyway… lets start talking about some of the new unexpected features that come with the upgrade:

New Features

We now have new Mobile Apps