Some community members have been in touch about upgrading to Windows 10 on Pro Tools systems and also what to do about the free Windows 10 upgrade that is about to expire.  This question from Alan Howe is typical...

You guys are my last resort for help if you have time. I was quite happy running PT 12 with Windows 7 on my PC. Sadly, I was seduced by the free Windows 10 download.

Big mistake... Pro Tools won't open at all now. When I try repair in the install programme panel I am getting a 'mdac 2.5' required. I think I'm out of my depth on this one, so any help you can give me would be great. I did try going back to Windows 7 but that didn't work either. I'm sorry I can't give you more information. If I click on Pro Tools, both the shortcut and the root in the Digi folder, it fails to open and gives no error message.

So we asked our resident Pro Tools Windows specialist Alan Sallabank for his take and advice on this and this is his response......

My advice to always do a clean install of Windows 10, is born out of the fact that six months ago I had an absolute nightmare with a Win 7 to Win 10 upgrade. However recently I've had better experiences with a couple of machines. Neither was running Pro Tools though.

A couple of questions - have you upgraded to Windows 10 Pro or Home?

Also, is there any reason you went straight to 12.5.2? I'm still happily running 12.4HD, which is more than happy on Windows 10 Pro, as is Pro Tools 11, and indeed Pro Tools 10, despite the dire warnings from Avid. In this instance Windows 10 isn't like Yosemite or El Capitan on Macs, where if you installed too early a version of Pro Tools, you couldn't uninstall it. I'm hearing a lot of unhappy reports about 12.5.x from a lot of people. My advice is that if you don't need collaboration, don't go beyond 12.4.

I bought a cheap "OEM" copy of Windows 10 Pro, rather than an upgrade.  Although Microsoft state that the free upgrade is "free for the lifetime of the machine", what they don't explain is that the free upgrade is locked to the hardware you upgraded on. So, if your motherboard fries, or you upgrade your processor, your free Windows 10 licence will expire, and you'll have to pay for it.

So in conclusion, my advice is to do what I have done and buy a cheap OEM copy of Windows 10 Pro, buy a cheap SSD system drive and do a clean install from scratch, and only going as far as 12.4 (if you don't need collaboration).