So I thought I’d do a quick writeup before going to bed to detail my experience with upgrading to Windows 10.

Butt cheeks were clenched.

First, I got impatient waiting for Windows Update to get around to doing it for me, so I followed these instructions (so kindly provided by Microsoft) to use the pre-downloaded files to make an ISO that you can then burn to a DVD or make a flash drive.  Your PC is domain joined?  Remove it from the domain, but be advised that your domain profile won’t be there after you upgrade – you’ll have to tweak settings and fix apps that were installed to be user specific.  I didn’t have much issue with mine.  Your files haven’t downloaded yet, you say?  Then follow these instructions (so kindly provided by Reddit) to get the download going early.  Didn’t reserve your copy?  Well, then you probably don’t want to upgrade right now anyway.  😉

I made a USB drive and ran setup from it.  I did a full upgrade, keeping all documents and apps.  I had to click to accept that I was losing Windows Media Center.  *sadface*  During one of the reboots it seemed to get stuck in a loop – I hit the reset button and it loaded up normally after that.  The only issue I ran into after getting to the desktop and rejoining my domain was connecting my domain account to my Microsoft account – the only way I was able to get it to work was by running Cortana’s setup.  The option in the control panel didn’t work.  After that, it was a matter of running Steam and resetting it to load with my new profile and installing new graphics card drivers.  My Hyper-V VMs booted up normally and are working as intended.

I know I don’t have a lot of details to share, but seriously… it was that easy. Don’t be afraid.  Take the plunge and get rid of that Windows 8.1 crap on your machine.