On Sat, Apr 09, 2016 at 11:23:10AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
I have a few tiny computers with Windows 8.x. They came with 2G of RAM and 32G of m.2 SATA SSDs. (A raft of systems were produced with these specs since the Windows licensing fees were essentially waived when these limits were observed.)
2G RAM + 32G HDD is actually a useful size for normal Linux distros. But there's not enough room for dual booting with Windows.
I wanted to update to Windows 10
(1) before the deadline for free updates
(2) because I could then wipe Windows and install linux without losing the ability to go back to licensed Windows. Note that the Windows 10 license authentication is based on Microsoft cloud records but previous versions require a magic code (that is no longer printed on the device) (I recently found out that it is in the ROM of these machines and can be discovered from Linux).
For the life of me, I could not get one of the machines to update. The update process kept making disk demands that were impossible to fulfill on a 32G disk. I've been trying off and on for months. I've spent a couple of hours on the phone with HP and Microsoft support.
I just solved the problem. I had installed an extra 8G of RAM in the machine. Once I removed it, Windows was happy to update.
There was NO hint of this in any of the diagnostics. None of the support folks brought it up.
Sheesh. Every time I muck with Windows I find new reasons not to touch it.
I wonder if the extra ram meant the default pagefile size got much bigger in order to allow hibernation. -- Len Sorensen