[GTALUG] update to Win 10, a war story

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

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.