Ok, So my little boy turns 8 next month. We were toying with the idea of getting him an xbox to play it on but I have managed to get hold of a pc from an auction this week. £5 for an Dell i5 base unit!…. It was sold as not working as had 4 beeps and wouldnt boot, but I took the memory out , and reseated it and it works perfectly. Including with all the old owners company details.! Ive deleted all the files I can see, but would really like to wipe it and start again. It has Windows 7.

I was looking at installing Win 10 and getting him the W10 version of Minecraft, but Win 10 is £120 plus the cost of the software. Ok cheaper than an xbox… but still.

Advice really, is it easy to reset to factory W7 and then install the Java version of Minecraft, or will he get a much better experience with Win 10 and the full version.

The Pc only has 2GB of RAM, but seems to run the benchmarks ok. and meets the basic requirements.

Ta.

You can buy Win10 for about £20 online. Try software geeks.

Mincraft will run on almost anything, you can play it through a browser if you want.

If you want to get the most out of your PC some more RAM and an SSD and it’ll fly.

Assuming you have the Win 7 key … use it to install Win 10. Would benefit from 4GB though.

I have the Win 7 key, but how does that work to install Win 10? I know it used to be free upgrade, but that stopped 18 months ago.

Best place to buy RAM?

Does anyone know if its possible to factory reset in case there is anything dodgy on the pc.

Software geeks has W10 Pro for £20. Is that the one I want, is there any disadvantage over the home version?

Thanks for the link!!

There was something about being able to install the “easy accessiblity” or something, version of W10 still from old keys. So whilst the “free upgrade” officially stopped, it’s actually still going if you tick a box somewhere to state you need the acessible version.  And lo, I think you can when installed, just turn the accessibility options off.

But you need someone cleverer than me to look into it further.

Sadly the accessibility loophole went at the end of last year.

Yep, the software geeks site is the place to go, Win10 Pro has a few extra features over the home version so no disadvantages, you’ll get a download link and a license key emailed to you when you purchase, I’ve bought half a dozen Win10 licenses and never had an issue.

I’d just create an install USB using the Win10 media creation tool and wipe the install drive during the installation process, that should clean everything up for you.

As for minecraft, the Win10 version uses the Bedrock engine that is used for the mobile and Xbox versions of minecraft, it means that he’ll be able to cross play with mates who have it on Xbox.  One the other hand the Java version has far far more mods and maps available for it but you’ll need to help moderate getting and installing them as a lot of them are hosted on dodgy sites, add into that the hassle of keeping java up to date, the fact that the mods are all version specific so you need the right version of minecraft installed for the particular mod you are playing and it can be a bit of a ball ache staying on top of it.

Unless he’s desperate for Java specific mods I’d say the Win10 version would be less hassle for you, mods are appearing for it at a fast rate, the engine is getting more active development and you just download them from a built in mod ‘store’ (although this does mean that some of them are paid for rather Java version where they are all free.)

If you fancy the Java version, look for a launcher called MultiMC which is like an organiser for minecraft versions, you can create multiple instances of minecraft of differing version ps and add mods to each one separately (my lad has about 30 instances of minecraft setup on it!!)

Sorry for the huge post but I’ve gone through all this over the last couple of years as my eldest (11yo) is obsessed… 🙂

Oh and while I remember, what kind of RAM does the PC take.? I’ve got boatloads of old sticks of RAM of various kinds lying around, if I have any of the right sort you are welcome to it for free..

#edit..  actually, now I think about it I’ve got a pile of old graphics cards lying around not doing anything either, what is the Dell fitted with.? If I’ve got anything better than what it came with you can have that too..

I think I’ve got a key for the windows version of Minecraft somewhere, I’ll try to dig it out for you if you want.

Awesome guys.

Apparently I have a Dell Vostro 460 which uses : 1333MHz (PC3-10600,DDR3 SDRAM, 249pin DIMM’s  and the graphics card is onboard, although looking at the back it has an HDMI output which I don’t think is standard according to Dell.

Any Help is appreciated,

I was still able to activate w10 using a w7 key a few months ago. Used Microsoft’s installation media tool to put it on a usb stick and did a clean install.

You can get W10 keys from eBay for a couple of quid.  Been doing that for years.  Also, I have a Nvidia NVS 300 graphics card I have no idea what to do with if you wanted it

Edit – in fact the NVS is poor, if anyone wants it for anything, i’ll happily post it to you.