Is Windows Xp Still Available For [UPD] Download
Mayme Iese
In the past few weeks, I've received multiple reports from readers who confirm that their Windows 7 and Windows 8.x systems are not activated after an upgrade to Windows 10. (Systems that were previously activated still continue to work properly, though.)
Microsoft's free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ended nearly seven years ago, but no one told the people who run the Windows activation servers. As a result, you can still upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 and claim a free digital license for the latest Windows 10 version, without being forced to jump through any hoops.
You can also still upgrade Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro by using a product key from a previous business edition of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 (Pro/Ultimate). That upgrade can save you as much as $100 in OEM upgrade charges if you buy a new PC with Windows 10 Home preinstalled. (For details, see "How to upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Pro without hassles".)
For the past six-plus years, I have repeated those steps on test PCs at regular intervals and confirmed that the free upgrade tool still works. Throughout my six-month sabbatical at the beginning of 2023, I continued to receive email messages from readers offering first-hand reports that their free upgrades were successful, with no purchase or product key required.
Over the years, a small number of readers have reported that the upgrade fails because of a setup error or a compatibility block. For details on how to troubleshoot these errors, see "This free Windows 10 upgrade offer still works. Here's why - and how to get it". For help decoding setup errors, see "Windows 10: Use setup log files to troubleshoot installation problems".
Then just follow the prompts to complete the upgrade to Windows 10. You will not be asked for a product key, and when the upgrade is complete and you've connected to the internet, you'll have a digital license that is valid for the most recent Windows 10 version, which you can confirm by going to Settings > Update & Security > Activation. All your apps and data files will be available.
This extension was, I think, a very large nod and a wink, designed to make it easy for those who wanted a Windows 10 upgrade to still get it while placating the OEM partners who were none too happy about the year-long emphasis on upgrades rather than new PC sales.
The big question now is whether Microsoft will ever turn off the code on its activation servers that dispenses digital licenses after an upgrade from an earlier Windows version. I've continued to test that scenario, and I can confirm, long after the end of support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, that it still works.
Since installing Windows 8.1, the computer had 4+8=12 GB of RAM. I upgraded it by changing the 4 GB to an 8 GB module. Could that be the problem? Or is this behavior normal and I've just misunderstood the meaning of available physical memory?
The "System" graph in that version of Process Explorer is poorly named. It should be labeled "commit charge". (In the version I have it's called "System commit". Better, but still not completely consistent.) In any case the "current" height of the graph there is what shows lower down in the text section as "Commit Charge" - "Current", and the max height of the graph represents "Commit Charge" - "Limit".
This has nothing directly to do with how much RAM is free or available. Yes, you have about 4.5 GB RAM available. That doesn't mean you can exceed the commit limit. Committed memory does not necessarily use RAM and is not limited by the amount of available RAM.
Note 3: Let's suppose that we have 4 GB "available" RAM. That means that we could reference already-allocated but never-before-referenced committed memory about a million more times (4 GB / 4096) before we'd be out of RAM. At which point, if we have a pagefile as David Cutler and Lou Perazzoli intended, some of the longest-ago-referenced pages in RAM would be saved on disk and then made Available for use in resolving these more recent page faults. (Actually the OS would initiate RAM reclamation methods like "working set trimming" rather before that, and the actual writes to the pagefile are cached and batched on the modified page list for efficiency, and and... ) None of that would affect the "committed" count. It is relevant, though, to the "commit limit". If there isn't room for all of "committed" memory in RAM, the excess can be kept in the pagefile. Thus the size of the pagefile contributes to the "commit limit".
But let's suppose we haven't done those million more references and there are still about 4GB worth of pages "available". Now let's suppose the same process - or another, doesn't matter - does another VirtualAlloc, this time of say 200 MB committed. Again, this 200 MB gets added to the commit charge, and it does not remove any RAM from available. Simply VirtualAlloc'ating address space does not use up a corresponding amount of RAM, and having low "available" RAM does not limit the amount of address space you can VirtualAlloc (nor does having high available RAM increase it).
Because the "commit charge" does represent potential future use of storage space. "Commit limit" represents the total amount of storage (RAM + pagefile space) available to hold such allocations, should they ever actually be referenced and thence need to be stored someplace.
Again (sorry for the repetition): it does not matter how much Available RAM you have. The OS has promised that the RAM or pagefile space will be available when it's needed, but that promise doesn't subtract from "Available". Available RAM is only used up by committed v.m. when it is referenced for the first time, which is what causes it to be "faulted in"... i.e. realized in physical memory. And simply committing (= allocating) virtual memory doesn't do that. It only takes free virtual address space and makes usable virtual address space out of it.
Suppose you had just 500 MB of commit limit left and some program had tried to VirtualAlloc 600 MB. The attempt fails. Then you look at the system and say "What? There's still 500 MB left!" In fact there might be a heck of a lot more left by then, because the process in question is likely gone completely by that point, so ALL of its previously-allocated committed memory has been released.
And that's when you see "system is running LOW on memory". That is an early warning that if things continue without mitigation you will likely soon see an "out of memory" warning. Time to close down some apps. I'd start with your browser windows.
One might argue that the OS should just let the allocation happen and then let the references fail if there's no RAM available to resolve the page faults. In other words, up above where we described how the initial page fault works, what if the "allocate an available physical page of RAM" (step 1) couldn't be done because there wasn't any available, and there was no place left to page anything out to make any available?
You can demo all of this with the testlimit tool from the SysInternals site. Option -m will allocate committed address space but will not "touch" it, so will not cause allocation of RAM. Whereas option -d will allocate and also reference the pages, causing both commit charge to increase and available RAM to decrease.
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In 2019, Microsoft began reducing the prevalence of Cortana and converting it from an assistant into different software integrations.[9] It was split from the Windows 10 search bar in April 2019.[10] In January 2020, the Cortana mobile app was removed from certain markets,[11][12] and on March 31, 2021, the Cortana mobile app was shut down globally.[13] On June 2, 2023, Microsoft announced that support for the Cortana standalone app on Microsoft Windows would end later in 2023 and would be replaced by Microsoft Copilot.[14] Currently, Cortana is only available in the Microsoft Outlook mobile app.[15]
On May 26, 2015, Microsoft announced that Cortana would also be available on other mobile platforms. An Android release was set for July 2015, but the Android APK file containing Cortana was leaked ahead of its release. It was officially released, along with an iOS version, in December 2015.[22]
In May 2017, Microsoft announced INVOKE, a voice-activated speaker featuring Cortana, in collaboration with Harman Kardon. The premium speaker has a cylindrical design and offers 360-degree sound, the ability to make and receive calls with Skype, and all of the other features currently available with Cortana.[38]
Cortana had a "do-not-disturb" mode in which users were able to specify "quiet hours", as was available for Windows Phone 8.1 users.[73] Users were able to change the settings so that Cortana calls users by their names or nicknames.[67] It also had a library of "Easter Eggs", pre-determined remarks.[74][75]
As of 2020[update] the English version of Cortana on Windows devices was available to all users in the United States (American English), Canada (French/English), Australia, India, and the United Kingdom (British English). Other language versions of Cortana are available in France (French), China (Simplified Chinese), Japan (Japanese), Germany (German), Italy (Italian), Brazil (Portuguese), Mexico, and Spain (Spanish). Cortana listens generally to the hot word "Hey Cortana" in addition to certain languages' customized versions, such as "Hola Cortana" in Spanish.[94]
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