The Evils of Windows 10
12I yielded to deadline anxiety and “upgraded” two 8.1 laptops to Windows 10 this weekend. Now trying to figure out how to do the same with several 32gb windows 8.1 tablets…or even whether I should bother.
Have i just handed my soul to MS, as I have already pledged it to Apple, Google, and other corporate demons in the past? Should I roll back?
Assuming I keep windows 10 (yes, I am weak), what ways are there, if any, to protect what’s left of my privacy (I assume Google, at least, knows all).
Any tips on making Windows 10 more usable or tolerable?
Any tips on upgrading the tablets, esp since i would want to retain the windows.old info for a while?
My concerns include shared wifi info (MS has no access to my contacts), automatic upgrades, windows as spyware, windows as adware, endless telemetry, etc. Thoughts?
Yeah i know I should have mastered Linux. I didn’t.
If I repent and revert back will it do any good? Am I over-reacting? Am i just lazy? All of the above?
- 24 comments, 143 replies
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My experience “upgrading” several machines from reasonably new to really old off-lease Dell Opliplex’s to Windows 10 has been surprisingly positive. Sometimes the download takes forever, so downloading and creating a Windows 10 flash drive or DVD can shortcut the download process.
As to privacy issues, it appears you can turn most of them off. As part of the upgrade process there is a place where you can click “custom”. I unchecked almost everything except the security stuff. The shared wifi and peer to peer updates checkboxes are there.
I’d guess you’re not giving up anymore net privacy with Winsows 10 - actually likely less with the settings turned down - than living in the Google or Android or iOS world.
I’m currently on an iPad or I’d point straight to the screen if you didn’t do it in the upgrade process.
Everybody likes to bitch about Windows - partially, but not completely valid.
Having said that, Windows 7 security patch support goes out to 2020 so if you already have old machines, it might not be worth the bother to upgrade since they’ll die by then.
2-3 year old machines might make sense to avoid that nasty XP-like drop dead date.
One advantage for lazy folks - antivirus defense is built into Windows 10.
But our experience with the Edge browser is crap. Crashes all the time on a couple of our machines.
So we use other browsers.
@RedOak
Edge does have some pretty unique features for a browser, being optimized for touch and holographic. If it wasn’t slow or didn’t occasionally crash, it may even have a chance of becoming popular.
@DVDBZN Agreed. I wanted to like Edge. Was looking for a solid alternative to Chrome and Firefox.
Edge is clean, but aside from the crashy and forget its tabs behavior, it is also frustratingly missing some features that elude me since we stopped using it - perhaps tab control/copy/etc…
Wow, in the light of day see I mutilated Dell “OptiPlex” above, writing on my tablet. Can’t imagine why iOS wouldn’t like it.
@RedOak Much the same experience. Win10 hasn’t been as bad as I expected. It did take a lot of time to configure all of it on multiple computers, turning off most of the security risks and bandwidth hogs. Most of the updates have gone smoothly, though the last one kept crashing my desktop and causing a restart for a couple of hours (of anxiety on my part) before whatever it was was fixed, and it was back to being reliable. Sometimes, though, it just feels easier to open the Chromebook, have it instantly load, do what I want to do, then instant off.
Spybot Anti-Beacon works extremely well . . .
https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/
@Pavlov That’s what I use and recommend too.
i use tronscript
its a 2 click anti-virus,anti-spyware,anti-malware app
but it also disables windows 10 tracking
if you can deal with the privacy problems, windows 10 is actually not too bad, it seems to run faster than windows 7 on my 2 devices, and as long as you dont run into device incompatibilities, it should be smooth sailing.
oh and when you upgrade, it saves your entire old OS so you can downgrade and go back easily
@communist
Much thx. Will check it out.
Am trying to figure out how to dwal with upgrading the 32gb tablets, since i cannot possibly free up 20gb free space on internal memory on them.
@f00l At least with 16GB Win8 tablets, Microsoft’s upgrade tool can use a microSD card to cache data and do the upgrade. Worth a shot to try popping in a blank 16GB+ microSD and see if it works.
I’ve heard a lot of stuff from people who are rationalizing their of hate Windows 10 which, in actuality, exists purely becuase they hate change / “MICROSOFT IS FORCEING ME!”, and some of the (often anecdotal) reasons they give are actually downright wrong.
I’ve been running Technical Preview since before Windows 10 was released, and even before RTM rolled out I was impressed at many of the things that had improved over Windows 7 (I am not affiliated with Microsoft in any way, I simply enjoy new technology). I understand some people love Windows 7 but although a good OS, it shows its age and certainly could use an update. Which is, believe it or not, what Windows 10 is.
Let’s get this out of the way- A lot of people have had a negative reaction to the nagging that Microsoft has done to get them to upgrade, which is understandable as a stubborn person myself (in a lot of cases it has had the reverse effect).
However, what many people don’t understand is what a pain it is for developers to simultaneously update and maintain THREE OSes because their users refuse to update. It has happened for every generation of Windows, and it is a problem they constantly have to cope with. Microsoft has vast resources but it is not omnipotent, and writing and maintainting an OS takes a lot.
Remember all the trouble we had when people, businesses, and governments refused to upgrade from aging and no-longer-secure Windows XP? While this is not applicable to most users, Windows 10 has a new scheme for updates that will provide only critical security updates for systems that must function in a mission-critical environment, alleviating the growing pains for businesses while allowing consumers to get newer features (and yes, there are actual new features).
A widespread myth I see people perpetuating is that software or drivers won’t work, however almost all software that runs on Windows 7 and 8 works just fine, even after doing an in-place upgrade, all programs continued to function, including expensive Autodesk and Adobe software. Drivers for Windows 8 and most for Windows 7 will work. And this was before developers had even done anything to make their software compatible with the new OS. Now that Windows 10 is the de-facto standard for new PCs, there is absolutely no reason to worry about this. Developers should be maintaining their software, so if you choose to run XP-era abandonware, that’s not something you should blame Microsoft for. What you should worry about is anything on Windows 7 functioning after its EOL- do you really want to be running Windows 7 in 2020? Isn’t this supposed to be like, the Future or something?
Another myth is that Windows 10 is some kind of spyware that compromises your security or privacy. In reality, the telemetry features in Windows 10 do not do anything nefarious and in fact some of them may make you safer, such as the way Windows Defender sends information about new threats to Microsoft to be analyzed, a feature that expensive antivirus suites such as Kaspersky have had for years. For the record, I still recommend Kaspersky over Windows Defender, but as a large amount of consumers will not be running Windows with third-party antivirus installed, adding that information to the security community benefits all of us.
In any case, Windows 7 and 8 have had most of the same telemetry updates for a while, so you are in the same boat whether you upgrade or not. And almost all these features can be turned off in the designed-for-idiots GUI the first time you install, and the ones that can’t can be toggled in the group policy editor, which also has an easy to use GUI. They can also be deleted in one swoop by using a simple third party tool (which has a GUI!) And even if you choose not to turn them off, they aren’t really ‘gotchas’- simply features that make things a little bit easier for Microsoft to improve their OS and decide how to improve it. Their use is well documented and the system will not nag you to turn them back on, like almost every other OS seems to do these days. The features are well documented elsewhere so I will leave it to you to decide what is best for your personal use. I personally run Windows with all telemetry features disabled.
Windows is not open source libre software, and shouldn’t be treated as such (as much as I wish it were, but it would not exist if that were the case). As far as security, Windows 10 is by all means a secure operating system for your everyday use (in the grand scheme of things-Windows NT-based systems will always be more vulnerable than most UNIX-based systems, but this is largely due to the fact that it is much more widely targeted by attackers due to its huge install base, but once again this is not something to worry about for the average user).
Another complaint people give me is “I don’t like the interface! It’s different and designed for tablets!” In fact it’s not very different and even as someone who completely skipped Windows 8, I was breezing along in Windows 10 the same way I had used Windows 7 in minutes. The task manager is much improved as well as the file explorer, and the oft-maligned start menu can be much better customized to your needs and once again, can be removed and replaced with the old one via the always-present third party tools. The fairly useless Aero flip from windows 7 has been replaced with a much more useful flat view of all running applications, as well as a multiple desktops feature (which can be turned off, too). The Charms bar from Windows 8 has been replaced with a much more versatile notification center with the same functionality, but with more content. All of the tablet features will remain hidden if you never choose to use them, and the obnoxious and disruptive ones from Windows 8 like auto fullscreen apps and start screen have been deleted (more precisely, they will only activate if you have chosen to use your device in tablet mode). Because this is Windows, you can customize everything, and seldom need type commands into a terminal window to do so. Speaking of which…
Some people who are more ‘hardcore’ computer users seem to feel like Microsoft has forsaken them, especially since the apparent dumbing-down in Windows 8. From my experience, Windows 10 does the opposite, making things much easier to operate in the Windows NT environment. A quick Win+X will give you quick access to all your administrative tools, PowerShell allows you to do many things not possible before, and the Task Manager and Command Prompt have been greatly improved and modernized. While the new settings panel presents a great source of confusion in long-time users, the classic Control panel exists untouched and works the same way it always has. I use and appreciate the more technical features of Windows regularly- Microsoft appears to have made a big acknowledgement to the needs of computer professionals in Windows 10.
A strange thing I have heard from some people is, “My computer was designed for Windows 7, so it should run best with Windows 7.” A counterpoint- have you ever upgraded a ‘designed for Windows Vista’ machine to Windows 7? This is simply bad logic, all legacy hardware configurations are natively supported in Windows 10. (Why do you think there exists an x86 version of Windows 10?) In fact, some machines will run much better. For example, my Thinkpad X220T, an early professionally-oriented pen and touch laptop from 2012 with the Sandy Bridge chipset, runs smoother, has a much less cluttered and lightweight interface on its relatively small display, and has far better pen and touch functionality than it did in Windows 7. I am amazed at the increase in usability this machine has gotten years after the fact, and I still use it as my daily laptop for digital painting and image editing.
The Bottom Line: I’m sure there are a lot more details I could expound on, but in the long run, rest assured you’ll be better off running the latest OS and not running around with computer band-aids to get your system to keep working. You’ll appreciate the added improvements and fixes to the small annoyances that Windows 7 had (like the way explorer would break sometimes, and the patchy support for volumes larger than 2 TB). You can downgrade within the month if you don’t like it for whatever reason, and keep the digital entitlement on that machine forever if you decide to upgrade again down the line. Microsoft is making it incredibly easy for us this time around, compared to the way it has been with new Windows versions in the past.
And while many hype-train companies, Microsoft sometimes included, want you to think their products will give you a life-altering DMT-like experience, in my opinion, after a while using Windows 10, it’ll feel like nothing has really changed all that much. It won’t be completely bug-free, it may be a bit smoother and nicer and ‘modernized’, but everything is there and everything works. And for the corner of cyberspace that I live in, that’s the way I like it.
@Marippy Another note, I can’t see why anyone would refuse to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 8. I know I said I have not used Windows 8 much in my original post but Windows 10 just seems to be better in every way
@Marippy
The best response I’ve seen yet. I hope you don’t mind if I quote you in the future.
You mentioned that software and drivers were compatible. The only problem I had when upgrading was that Minecraft wouldn’t start because of the graphics driver (Intel integrated HD graphics) and Java error. Apparently, Windows installed some other driver that needed to be replaced to let Minecraft run.
@DVDBZN Haha, I’ve actually been binging on Minecraft the last week. It always worked the same for me, did you figure it out?
@Marippy
Yeah, but my computer is so old that it can’t run Minecraft properly without Optifine, and multiplayer is even worse. That is why I like Minecraft: Windows 10 version -it’s much faster since it doesn’t run on Java. I think “bingeing” was the word you were looking for.
I would upgrade everything you can and do clean installs where possible. If nothing else you can always revert after the 31 days by doing a clean install of your prior OS (using either method). It has the added bonus of on doing any current issues your computer has and not having to rely on Microsoft to roll things back competently.
Most of the Privacy stuff has been Much Ado About Nothing and/or is stuff that people have been bitching about their phone providers, ISPS, social media sites, and search providers doing for years anyhow so unless you’re planning to cut yourself off from all of those sorts of services it’s kind of pointless to get bent out of shape about it.
@jbartus completely agree on the clean install advice. Good excuse to sweep out all the clutter.
And if you’re paranoid you can take images of your system before 10 upgrade, after 10 upgrade, and then do the clean install. I’ve done clean installs of 10 post free-10 upgrade and the activations worked fine.
@jbartus you mean like how microsoft can push an update and force your machine to install it and you can do nothing about it?
You can even control os updates on Android and iOS… but not windows… they basically just put the last nail in their coffin.
@thismyusername I can think of few situations in which the six month grace period afforded Pro users isn’t sufficient lead time for fixes to be made, even fewer in which said Pro users shouldn’t really be Enterprise users, and roughly as few where Home users are likely to have issues. Other than potential issues with compatibility there’s really not much reason to avoid updates, updates are important to the health of your system and every device it interacts with.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jbartus so when the hacker gets the certs and pushes the trojans down to millions of machines at the same time…
It is a foolish design choice… is it just to sell more pro licences? I have no idea… but it is just ready to be abused by hackers and overreaching govt agencies.
How about they just default to ‘automatically download and install’ but leave the choice to only be notified… would that be so hard? It makes it really easy to be paranoid about their real intentions.
@thismyusername if you’re that paranoid about it buy Pro licenses, there are a bunch of other reasons to go Pro anyhow and it’s not much more money.
Microsoft would have to be pretty suicidal to allow the system to be so easily gamed, such an event would literally end them in every way conceivable, I think you should trust that they’re gonna be on top of making sure that kind of thing is impossible.
@jbartus I have pro licences on my machines… this is not about me… this is about microsoft and what they are doing to millions of “customers”…
so when norton goes to them and makes a deal to install symantic
back doorantivirus as a promo… and you can’t disable the install you will be singing the same tune?when a govt agency decides that since you typed something on a forum they didn’t like and they decide they need to tap your machine and you can’t disable the install… same tune?
when you have 300 million zombie copies of windows 10 home attacking non stop because someone left a test cert in by “accident”… same tune?
It’s a foolish design choice… and it is selling a lot of apple laptops right now.
and the most obvious… when they push one of their great patches and blue screen millions of machines at the time time… same tune?
@thismyusername
hands over a roll of tinfoil
I think you’re in need of a hat.
Sorry, not trying to be rude but some of this stuff… I’m quite sure the government doesn’t need Microsoft’s help, if they don’t already have their hooks in ever major browser and/or search engine I’d be honestly shocked. And 300 million zombie copies of home… come on now.
@jbartus ok… thanks for the tinfoil, will be grilling. No need for a hat my white fedora fits fine thanks.
@thismyusername don’t get me wrong, security is important and being careful about who you trust with your information is important but at the end of the day you can either be an island and go off the grid or trust some organization or another with defending you. In this case Microsoft has a massive financial interest in ensuring that your dire prophecy of 300 million zombies does not come to pass. In fact, the optional nature of updates previously has led to many instances of DDoS attacks originating on unsuspecting home user’s machines so… I’m with MS on that one. Then again, I’m on the front lines dealing with people who ask me to install anti-malware and registry scrubbers and the like then never run them while ignoring their update button, so maybe I’m biased.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jbartus You don’t find it the least bit weird that you are having to defend not being able to update when you want?
It is odd that there is no option (short of going and manually disabling services and after seeing how they did with the GWX I would not be surprised to see those services magically re-enable every-time you do a manual update).
In an age where some providers are charging 50 cents a megabyte… (yes over $50 a gigabyte) to move data… and you can’t tell it to exclude ethernet like you can a wifi connection… even though your ethernet connection might be using a cellular internet connection… it’s just down right odd.
People on slower DSL lines just have their streaming and games brought to a crawl when windows is doing an update… I will admit I do like the local/wan p2p update sharing… about time. I guess that is what became of skype after they put it in the cloud
I hope I have won you over to the side of the correct, those of us who think windows in all versions should let us control when we get downloads and updates. Thanks for your time.
@jbartus
Regarding privacy - in the PC days of my existence, i was pretty active, deleting cookies, erasing caches and history, and more. Then i got my hands on smartphones, and it was so nice having the internet in my pocket that i quit trying very hard, and then later even less, at least regards first apple, then google, and various carriers.
Plus google has custody of many of the Various Emails I Never Read. And my phones have GPS on cause i kinda use it a lot.
So google has all. And apple has quit a bit. And various cell companies have lots. Facebook knows who is my family, i suppose, but i dont use it much.
It seems a bit “that train left the station already” of me to bitch too much now, as i ignored the issue when i had the option to make a choice with smartphones.
MS is one more company, and i suppose i have the choice of “no”, tho i dont seem to be making that effort.
I have a friend who uses flip phones and linux. I admire his self-discipline.
@thismyusername
I believe in Win10 you have some control over time of day and machine usage in terms of allowing updates to download and install. You can set them, for instance, at 4am and tell the machine not to do them when in active use or something, in which case the machine will just default to “later”.
Not sure. Can anyone confirm?
@f00l NSFW LANGUAGE
@thismyusername and he had the settings @f00l described set or?
As to rollback to your original version - since you have 31 days to do that, I wonder whether it might make sense to upgrade and immediately roll back. I think that grants you the Windows 10 license for that machine doesn’t it? So couldn’t you then upgrade back to 10 again, even after the deadline for free? Lots of work tho.
@RedOak
Undecided on a quick rollback. Thought i"d give it a week’s tryout first.
My understanding of the win 10 licensing is as yours - that if a machine is upgraded, it gets a win 10 license from that moment, even if the machine is rolled back afterwards.
@f00l Windows 10 activates with digital entitlement, so yes, as long as the hardware remains the same, the activation made now will persist in their database if you roll back and re-install later.
However, note that you may have to re-install a Win 10 version that is pre-anniversary update to get this to work 100% of the time, if doing this after the first week of August.
@Pavlov that pre-free-10-expiration version tip is interesting. Yet another reason to have the install downloaded on a flash drive or even better, burned to a DVD. (I’ve had PC management utilities on flash drives that Microsoft Security Essentials did not like, automatically removed!)
What do you mean? Win 10 is awesome! :s:
(This was not my blue screen of death, but I did get one last night.)
@KDemo
I got several of those screens along the way, upgrading several machines. reboot and all was ok each time. Perhaps Win10 was installing or upgrading drivers as it went along?
@f00l - This was about a month in, not a smooth transition.
@KDemo clean install or upgrade?
@jbartus - Upgrade. Wouldn’t know how to do a clean install on my old pc. (HP refurb bought from woot years ago).
@KDemo If you’re curious: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-10-media-creation-tool-create-installation-media-upgrade
I am happy to consult via Skype/Discord/Slack/Whatever if people need help with doing stuff.
@jbartus - Kind of you, thanks. I’m working up to a new computer, this one has so many problems. I got some good advice over here, just waiting for my ship to come in (carrying cash).
@KDemo just a heads up, until windows 10 gets activated you will want to do an upgrade anyway… once you show it has been activated with Microsoft THEN you could do clean install if you wanted… this will not matter after July 29th.
@thismyusername - Thank you. I upgraded and have been using it, just having problems and that endearing blue screen - possibly due to my old, problematic computer.
I’ve been contemplating upgrading my lap top since the deadline is fast approaching. I just find it weird that Windows is giving it away for free.
@RiotDemon
I suspect they plan to try to tie users - and user data - into their business plan, insteading of relying only on licensing. Just a guess tho.
@f00l Expect Windows to become a true service. After another year or so, MS will tell you that you can keep using the version of Windows you have but they will stop supporting it and you won’t be able to upgrade it without paying them annually for the service. In fact, Enterprise pricing has already been announced for this - and it comes in at approx. $7.00 US per month per licensed machine (not accounting for [huge] volume discounts they’ll offer for retention). The free ride for the small business and home user will end soon enough after they ding large corporations . . .
@Pavlov taken with a grain of salt but Microsoft statements on the matter have been that the Enterprise program is exactly that and that home users will not be facing a similar service plan. I feel like they would get hit with a pretty massive class action lawsuit if they tried some sort of bait-and-switch. The idea of unifying the user base to try to push their cross-device single solution concept seems more likely to me. More users on the latest Windows makes pushing phone Integrations with Windows phone more viable for example. We will have to wait and see
@RiotDemon I’ve read the above as @Pavlov and @jbartus mention as well.
But I suspect they also want to minimize the number of folks stuck on pre-10 to avoid another Windows XP end of life support mess.
Can’t wait for one of these OS upgrades to make Office 2007 incompatible. /s I refuse to sign up for the Office 365 subscription model. Killing off the pre-subscription versions of office would be the best thing for drumming up real Office competition tho.
@RiotDemon I think part of the push behind this is that Apple has been giving away Mac OS updates for years now. That doesn’t explain the deadline. It’s also not equivalent as Apple makes money on hardware and also gets a cut of their much bigger app store.
@RedOak Office 2016 can be had as a standalone product so you can rest your weary head in that regard. Even Office XP and the like still install IIRC.
@djslack getting a dedicated app store up and running and making them money is one of their prime motivations behind it to be certain. They’re hoping you’ll buy into the platform and get windows phones because of the cross-platform app availability and such.
@jbartus except we own many Office 2007 licenses, it is plenty powerful and not missing anything material for us vs 2016, and I believe Microsoft officially declared the previous version, 2003, incompatible with Windows 10.
And our 2007 licenses are more friendly, using local keys and (legal) two machine installs rather than the 2010 and later online activation.
We like 2007 plenty fine. It just works.
@RedOak I think you missed my point. I may be to blame but we’ll blame @brhfl just the same.
In plain English: Office is still offered in a non-subscription format, and legacy editions still work fine stretching back prior to your edition, you should be fine. Official Schmofficial.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_10-windows_install/a-look-at-running-older-versions-of-microsoft/6faf72ea-254a-4c8e-9982-2c36cdb1936c
Besides, I personally draw the line at caring 10 years in, especially in a business as the money spent has been made up for in produced work and productivity many times over.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@RedOak
Speaking of XP…i have a netbook that runs it. I sometimes hand it to visitors who want Windows. I also have some Vista machines in storage, i need to clean or kill the hard drives and re-purpose them…someday. and i also have 2 Win2K machines, with lots of media on them, ditto needing to clean them and hammer the hard drives.
Someday.
@RiotDemon
Believe it or not, but Microsoft has much more to gain from this than everyone who accepts the offer.
When Windows Vista came out, people hated it so much that they “upgraded” to XP, vowing to stick with that. The same thing happened with Windows 8, but on a smaller scale. Now the majority of users are stuck on XP and Win7, with a few with Win8. If Windows 10 was to be successful, the majority of Windows users must switch to it. What better way of doing that than giving out free software? It may have costed Microsoft a pretty penny at the start of the operation, but is is going to be well worth it in the long run.
Basically, instead of allowing users to keep using the same OS for the rest of the computers life, they tried to convince everyone to switch to the same OS.
Honestly, I think it’s a wise choice to upgrade, considering many of the pros of Windows 10.
@f00l Speaking of Netbooks, we have a really solid and old Toshiba Netbook. Running Windows 7 Starter. Slowww. And window screen-like 1024x768 resolution.
Note: Windows 7 Starter (neutered) maps to Windows 10 Home edition.
For kicks, I was curious if it would be offered the free Windows 10 upgrade so I turned it on after it sitting idle for at least a year. It was.
Windows 10 runs fine on it - still slow, but seems maybe a bit snappier. Will do a clean install to see if that helps that ancient box further. Note: maxed out at 2GB RAM.
@RedOak Maxed out at 2GB? Can’t jam a bigger stick in there?
@jbartus Hah! Yep, could do that but the mobo insists 2GB is the max.
It runs surprisingly OK in a crunch.
@RiotDemon You totally should do that- Microsoft has a number of reasons for giving away Windows 10 for a year, some better than others.
One reason is that there’s very little money in OS upgrades anymore, and so it’s not hurting them a lot to do this kind of giveaway.
Another group of reasons revolve around reducing their support burden- if they can change their userbase to mostly Windows 10, they’d be thrilled- it would avoid Windows 7 carrying such a huge userbase into 2019 & 2020 (end of support), and the less than desirable issues around that.
This lets Microsoft use newer technology that can work a lot better, improve the install base for their more recent tech and be able to convince developers that those platforms are now worth taking seriously because of the greatly expanded userbase.
I keep having those annoying switch to 10 deadlines pop up randomly and over the past few days it has gotten even worse. Windows 8 was a clusterfuck and while I have heard 10 is better, I am sticking to my Windows 7 that I love. I won’t be bullied into switching.
@thismyusername shame on that store/mall/building for using Windows 8 for their directory board anyhow!
@mfladd
Weird. I never got such notifications on my Windows 7 computer.
I recommend upgrading. Try it out for a few weeks, and if you don’t like it, you can downgrade back to your old OS.
@DVDBZN OMG, they popped ALL the time. And full page ones now. Ugh, I am sooooooo hesitant.
@mfladd this is what I have been using to keep the GWX from re-infecting machines after I revert them
http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html
seriously consider updating and reverting so you have the win10 licence for your machine(s)… in the battle of my paranoia vs my thrift… my thrift wins
so I’ve updated all but my DVR machines (they live on windows 7 until I get busy and move it to mythtv).
If you don’t have a good backup of your current machine check out Macrium Reflect Free… never had it fail me yet.
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
@mfladd If you decide not to upgrade, or just want to stop the notifications, I uninstalled KB3035583 which is responsible for the “Windows 10 downloader” update notifications. Go to control panel, windows update, installed updates, sort by name, “Update for Microsoft Windows KB3035583”, uninstall, reboot. When you’re offered the same again via Windows Update be sure to hide it.
@mfladd This is the easiest and the guaranteed to work work straight from Microsoft:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351
Change two registry keys (one to block the GWX app & icon, one to block upgrading to Windows 10). After July 29th, it won’t matter then.
10 gave my HP new pop, that is until I spilt a glass of water on it.
@cranky1950 I hear that Win-11 will be waterproof.
@daveinwarsh Oh sure after the damage is already done.
Yeah i know I should have mastered Linux. I didn’t.
There’s nothing to master. Here are the steps:
It’s really nothing like it was 20 years ago, when you’d have to fiddle with config files for days, or have a good Linux-scarred friend handy.
@stinks except it’s not nearly as cut and dry as people like you make it out to be.
I spent four hours getting Linux to play nice with my graphics card on a test machine I was setting up last year. That’s me as a techie and IT professional who is familiar with Linux, command line et al.
That doesn’t even cover the fact that they also have to relearn where everything is, learn new things that replace familiar things from Windows that aren’t there, learn a new way of getting software, learn to install software that isn’t available through the tracked repositories, potentially need to customize from source a piece of software to get it to behave, potentially lack drivers for some of their hardware, and learn to use new programs that replace software that isn’t ported to Linux. I think that covers the high points anyhow…
@jbartus I would’ve agreed twenty years ago. There still are hardware combos that won’t always play nicely… sometimes you lose admittedly important things – sound, wifi, 3-D acceleration – but the last few times I’ve tried, things have gone very well. /shrug YMMV, natch, but I haven’t had to command line something on Linux the last few times I’ve lived there, at least until I started developing. There are also very few apps on any OS I can’t live without. Linux has fairly serviceable replacements across the board now – minus games.
If you were fiddling around to play games, I hear you, but getting “normal Internet user” use out of desktop Linux has never been easier. What hardware were you using?
Admittedly, I jump around OSes with some frequency, so maybe there’s a sort of lock-in if you don’t keep those parts of your brain “fresh” by switching it up every so often. ??
@stinks if Linux were so wonderful and ready for mass consumption then why aren’t any significant mainstream machines available with it pre-installed?
Seems like a way for machine makers to eliminate the Windows license fee.
@stinks pretty bog-standard GTX-650 so… yeah it was embarrassing on Linux’s part. Also my creative soundcard is a brick in Linux mode (not a typical user issue but a point nonetheless)
Command line familiarity was more to emphasize that I’m no newbie, though it was something I had to resort to when the driver killed all video output and I had to use a terminal interface to fix things. Most of my command line familiarity is on servers which is a whole other animal.
@RedOak Gonna beat @stinks to this I bet…
Of course, all of these things have one thing in common, they’re limited architecture devices with custom-ish builds of Linux created by companies and curated to the end users without much variation available. Nobody’s come up with a practical modular phone as yet which allows you to mix and match processors and the like, for example.
@jbartus you forgot Apple OS X.
But you’re stretching “Linux” more than just a bit.
They all trace their roots to Linux/Unix but they are a lot more than just “Linux”.
Linux is still for geeks.
@RedOak OSX is a UNIX derivative, not a Linux distro.
Also, we’re beating the same drum! I just pointed out what he was bound to, that Linux is very much present in the wild. Also I disagree with the stretching as there’s not really anyone running pure Linux, everybody runs one distro or another.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jbartus OK - misunderstood. Apologies. But aren’t Linux and Unix sisters? (Therefore the Linux/Unix is for geeks comment.)
@stinks Linux mint…if you liked Windows XP…upgraded a couple of Vista laptops, and they’ll be good for a few more years. Actually easy to install; biggest problem was getting Chrome on it.
Now that your machines UUIDs are stored with
the nsamicrosoft you can go back to 8.1 and switch back to 10 once they introduce privacy controls that actually do something!I tried to make the switch to 10 but every time it would get to 34% and fail. This is on my main windows 7 desktop. A few weeks ago I replaced the motherboard and processor and I thought I would have all sorts of problems with windows authentication when I booted it back up but Windows ran fine. I have tried installing windows 10 using their pop up window and burning the iso to a DVD and running it from there and it always errors out in the exact same spot. Now I am on vacation and will be still when the deadline passes so it looks like I am stuck with windows 7 whether I like it or not. Thankfully, I like 7 just fine.
@Lister Bummer but no worries. Windows 7 is fine too - at least thru spring 2020.
@Lister My Win7 HP desktop kept failing on the download but ran perfectly when I created and ran the DVD. Every time it failed, I rebooted, and Win7 installed new (and different) updates. I thought it was all updated when I started this.
https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
Use notepad+ to not break the formatting, edit how you like, it’s basically .txt files you run through powershell after a fairly clean install.
I had to manually update the updater (or something) on both my 7 and 8.1 machines, but they’re both finally on 10. The 7 machine was pretty much a clean install to start with; the 8.1 had some time on it. While they both seem to be working fine, I haven’t managed to make my taskbar pink on the 8.1 machine yet… which is totally trivial, but dumb; the setting just doesn’t do anything, and I have reason to believe it’s because there’s a different color settings panel with my 8.1 settings causing a conflict. Which, again, completely trivial, but this whole like multiple control panels situation that started in 8 is kind of a mess. The default installation of Candy Crush Whatever bothers me more than it should. So far, things have a snappier feel to them, and the tablet vs. desktop (or whatever) paradigms seem to make sense, much more so than 7 on a tablet or 8 on a desktop did. Cygwin, the registry hack to remap caps lock to ctrl, and the little helper program that turns the touchscreen into a giant trackpad all seem to be working for me, so… I guess all is well.
@brhfl I forget if it was right click uninstallable but you can get rid of most of the random stuff MS put on Windows 10: https://meh.com/forum/topics/psa-removing-windows-10-bloatware
@jbartus Yeah, thanks for that. I hadn’t bothered to comb through the stuff thoroughly yet, but I know Candy Crush was not uninstallable from the tile like an 8 App Store download was (which I assume is what you mean), but I believe it appeared in Add/Remove Programs (or, you know, the 10 equivalent of that).
@brhfl Good news! With the Anniversary Update on August 2nd, you’ll have access to the new Linux Subsystem, which lets you run actual unmodified Linux stuff on your Win10 machine: https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/07/22/fun-with-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/
Compiling Nethack, using your favorite editor, and other cool things.
@dashcloud I know, I’m pretty excited! Though everything I’ve seen refers to it as ‘run a real bash shell!’ which makes me wonder if there will be other shells made available… more of a zsh user, not that it’s a deal-breaker. Anyway, I have a feeling I’ll still ‘need’ Cygwin for a while until packages catch up, but at the same time Windows is really just a secondary OS for the Linux install on there anyway…
So, @jbartus, I have procrastinated until the absolute last day to upgrade my windows 7 laptop. I have an expensive to replace software that isn’t certified to even work on Windows 7, so I have hesitated to upgrade. Obviously, I am going to try 10 because I expect in a little while MS will brick my nice 7 machine!! How long, on average, does this upgrade take to do??
Hahah Hubby has an older pc to do tonight, I cannot remember what version it is running!!
@mikibell few hours for their auto-updater-thing, under an hour (just Windows) for clean.
@jbartus Awesome… thank you!!
@jbartus commencing download now…
@mikibell My (old) Win7 machine failed three or four times using the download method, giving me two different vague error messages. I created a DVD and ran it, and it worked perfectly the first time. If at first you don’t succeed, use a DVD. I’m sure Office Depot just had a sales spike for the 5-DVD package.
@OldCatLady hubby created a jump drive for each machine
download was just spinning…
@OldCatLady USB drives are better. Fastest option overall. OPTICAL MEDIA IS DEAD!
@jbartus I hadn’t used a DVD in at least three years; these leftovers were sitting in a box with other old stuff. Also a Razer mouse, NIB, that I forgot I had.
@OldCatLady woo Razer, which one?
@jbartus
Re optical media extinction
Bought a usb blu-ray drive for my Lenovo Yoga Pro a year ago. Thought i’d watch movies or GOT extras w it.
The BR drive is still in plastic. I know BR has way better resolution, but streaming media interfaces so very well w laziness.
Someday…or not…
@jbartus It was in a pink box. and my daughter just absconded with it. She left me my Mamba, however, which has some miles on it but still works.
I hate Windows 10…that is all
@somf69 I dunno I like it better than 8 and at least the dreaded twirling balls don’t show up as often
@somf69
Can you tell me why? I’m only seeing the positives, but then again, I am somewhat biased.
@somf69 I am always curious as well when hate for 10 is mentioned. Perhaps I’ve missed something.
Potentials:
Otherwise, it is a cleaned up, better at recovering from crashes (for example, video card crashes seem to simply popup an error message and the program continues rather than blue-screening or closing the program) Windows 7.
And if you hate those tiles on the menu, you can either ignore or mostly remove them. Otherwise you can use 10 just like 7 and easier than 8.
I’ve been quite surprised at how compatible 10 is with really old programs. Have friends running Windows XP era versions of Quicken and Act!.
@somf69 Oh, one more stopper for Windows 10:
If you like Microsoft Media Center, it disappears in 10. We have one box connected to the TV running it. And we like it. Aside from that media guide snafu about a year ago, it just works. So we’ll likely leave it on Windows 7. (Probably should go with aftermarket media programs…)
@RedOak those friends really need to upgrade Act!, I just upgraded a client from Act! 6 and it was both a nightmare and very awesome. (A nightmare because Act! 6 is ancient and their database crapped out so importing was a no-go) The move to a SQL based database was a huge plus in my book.
@jbartus Yep - since all he is doing with Act! is managing a list of clients for his Reo business - a list he simply uploads to his direct mail marketer, I tried to convince him to abandon it completely in favor of simply managing the simple list in Excel. No joy. Not yet anyway.
@RedOak Yep, I’m running Windows Media Center with a Cablecard. If I switch to Windows 10 my ability to watch cable tv on my PC goes away.
Here is my “Windows Update”, ha ha ha, worst pun ever.
I downloaded the MS Media Creation Tool to the tablet, ran it, it balked, saying I needed 8gb free. I cleaned and uninstalled like mad and got 9gb free. Also inserted a clean, format-able, bootable 128 gb sandisk flash drive jic. There was already a 64gb microsd card in the tablet with about 20 GB free.
Re-ran the MS Media Creation Tool. It’s going along, it downloaded whatever, rebooted, install is now at 15%, files copied at 50%. I don’t think the tool is using either the flash drive or the microsd card, not entirely sure.
So All My Base Are Belong To Microsoft, as well as everyone else in Silicon Valley and NSA HQ and so forth.
Perhaps while I’m waiting for the install to complete, i’ll read Candide.
@f00l you’ll like Windows 10… provided your update is successful and doesn’t fuck up. If it does, use the media creation tool to make that flash drive into a bootable install drive and use it to do a clean install!
I have read thru most of this thread and am still on thread about this whole upgrade. I appreciate all the posts. But, with my luck… Shit will get fucked up (loving 7). I know you people are the techno geeks and love you for it. You have helped me in the past…but. Are you going to come to my house if something goes wrong?
@mfladd no
@mfladd I’ll help you via Skype if you like!
@shrdlu Where are you on all this? Or should I not ask? You have been eerily quiet on this subject.
@mfladd Do you use Windows Media Center to record TV? If so, stay on Windows 7.
If you are lucky enough to have a Microsoft Store around, they will be happy to upgrade your machine for you.
@mfladd Well, since you did ask…
Windows 10? Are you completely INSANE? How about NO. Hell No!!! Stuff like that. Wait a minute, let me go get more coffee. Why did you wake me up so EARLY?
Ah, much better (it’s the second cup, so you’re all safe). Okay, sit down, this’ll probably take a minute or two.
Back when MS came out with Office 365, otherwise known as “Hah! Got you, you silly wankers!” I determined that it’d be best to stick with my current set up, which is as follows:
Microsoft Office on my Macbook (and it runs just fine, for those rare occasions where I need Excel, and even more rare moments when I need Word).
Windows 7 Professional on the machine I’m typing this on, and it also runs just fine, thanks, and I have absolutely no plans to upgrade. Then again, I don’t even let it update, automatically, and am VERY picky about which updates it chooses.
My single Linux box is still running an ancient version of Ubuntu (10.04 LTS, for the curious), and I have absolutely no plans to upgrade it. Everything else is either FreeBSD or OpenBSD. What kind of crazy person leaves essential services like DNS running on systems that can’t be trusted.
Back to the subject at hand; I won’t be upgrading to Win10 until I cannot buy a machine that doesn’t have Win7 (and I can still find those, thanks, as refurbs). I run Quicken 2004 (aka the last version with no hidden DRM), and it needs the Win7 Pro extension to emulate WinXP. I don’t use, DO NOT have, have no intentions of installing, Microsoft Office on my Windows 7 machine, which works just fine, thanks.
I see where Redmond tells me that they won’t support it after 2020. Okay by me. I don’t think that much of their support right now; never did. Now that you mention it, I probably should have a backup Win7 machine ready to fire up, when this one inevitably dies. I have so much financial data in Quicken. I’d rather not lose access to it.
Now aren’t you glad you asked?
For the tl;dr crowd: No, I’m not going to use Win10.
@Shrdlu I am. And thanks.
@Shrdlu You elected to continue with your current setup on the basis of a SaaS service that is offered alongside the continued existence of the traditional Office sales model?
Office HSE 2016
Office HSE 2016 for Mac
As for the rest of it… it sounds like you’re pretty knowledgeable about stuff which lets you be hyper vigilant and manage all of this stuff but, @mfladd not being a techno geek, self managing his updates and the like strikes me as one of those things which, if set up, probably will result in no updates ever being done. I’ve seen it happen with too many client machines, not a judgment on you @mfladd just speaking from experience!
@jbartus I have NO idea what you’re talking about wrt the Mac. My little ol’ Macbook is older than some people’s kids, and hit the wall with updating the OS from Apple a few years ago. The Office running on it is 2008. MacOS is 10.6.8 (I forget which animal it is).
I have a 108GB hard drive, and am using close to 20% of it, which is a LOT for me (but there’s pictures, and Lingua Latina, and some other obscure things). It all works for me. @mfladd asked; I answered.
I’m not remotely hyper-vigilant. I’m old, and I’ve been around a VERY long time.
@Shrdlu
o.O who was picking on your Mac? I was responding to what you said about Office 365 and your decision to stay put.
Shutting down things like DNS and actually taking the time to read through the updates and pick and choose them is being hyper vigilant in my book. I certainly wasn’t calling anyone old!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Shrdlu 10.6.8 is peak OS X, only been downhill from there IMO. That OS, w/ CS2… Sigh.
@jbartus I didn’t think you called me old. I just stated the fact. Before I forget, here you go, a bunch of them: :-} :-} :-} :-}
I didn’t recognize any of that SaaS mumbo jumbo, btw (hence my reference to you picking on me). Office 365 is a subscription service, far as I know. I’ve never looked into it much, because I prefer running it on the Mac. Less phoning home stuff in that one.
Just in case anyone else is trying to follow along, I do indeed run DNS, but only on OpenBSD. In the distant past, I even used to run Active Directory (sorry if that frightens anyone, since AD can be very scary), but it was in conjunction with real DNS servers (although it never knew it wasn’t in control, because I’m sneaky). Okay, okay, way too much information, I know. I’ll quit.
@Shrdlu SaaS = Software as a Service or, in layman’s terms a Subscription
Active Directory is your friend. Love Active Directory. Live Active Directory. Be Active Directory.
@Shrdlu Sorry for pulling you out into the light of day. Still love to hear your opinion. Go back to the lurking - less complicated.
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ5CD2muVQnTx8_s9JrGxfppDogkONum7Vw7pxewKePkc0kGPsEVQ
@mfladd wow, way to go kid!
@jbartus Bitch. I was timed out on Firefox. Will it get better on Windows 10? I don’t know yet.
@mfladd it’s okay, Belichick still loves you.
@mfladd I really loved that picture (I clicked through on the link). It bears a family resemblance. :-}
You invoked me. I don’t think it’s that easy to make me vanish again. /me curtseys.
@Shrdlu would you say you are more like Bloody Mary or Beetlejuice?
To anyone having problems with the initial Win 7/8.1 stage of the upgrade, particularly if you haven’t been great about keeping your machine up to date: you may need to go to the MS update catalog and search for the July 2016 update rollup. Win 7 is KB 3133977. Win 8.1 is KB 3172614. Read and check your update history for the prerequisites, though they seem to be very old updates. I had to do this on three machines that refused to take any automatic updates — including the Win 10 upgrade.
@brhfl Yup, my older Win7 desktop hadn’t updated, although it’s set to do it automatically. It’s a conspiracy, I say!
@brhfl So, the only thing that worked every time for me was creating a CD, using that, and not checking “Download updates”. Every other method worked occasionally, but I had a lot of things get stuck around 99% with other methods.
@dashcloud It’s no surprise to me that there are countless ways for this to fail… hah! In my case, it wasn’t even getting to the point where it could get stuck at a percentage… An incompatibility in the updating system meant it wasn’t even finding or downloading the Win 10 installer (or any more recent Win 7/8 updates).
Frankly, though, your advice is better than mine and ultimately should eliminate far more points of failure. I was so intent on solving the root issue, I didn’t even get around to exploring the possibility of a standalone installer…
Warning!!! Over-long tech q post follows! Read at your own risk!
I didn’t do a clean install on any of the machines that needed an upgrade, but I did uninstall a few things (like driver update utilities and other installed utils) first. I didn’t actually have that much installed…much or most of my software, even on biggie machines, uses various portable apps. no diff there, no registry crap.
I hate the bloatware and licensing of MS Office so use openoffice anyway.
Device Manager seems mostly ok. there are a few devices that have issues, the sort of devices where I have no idea what they are or what they do, while everything visible seems to work just fine. I’ll try to track down their drivers or other probs down this week.
do I really not worry anymore about antivirus sw? I have a few paid licenses to AVG, is there any point in installing it? what privacy/antispyware sw, apart from stuff already mentioned, do I want? I usually use Malwarebytes and sometimes scan with others such as Spybot. anything else I should do, apart from the tools mentioned above?
on ALL the laptops so far (4 of them - 2 Lenovo, 1 Asus, 1 MS), the touchpad right-click has issues. on most of them it works as it should if you hold down the Fn key when you right click, but I hope I don’t have to get used to doing that…would get me po’ed. several of the touchpads are synaptics…the asus transformer book seems to be an Asus device, the MS Surface Pro seems to be non-synaptics also. but they all malfunction identically - when you try to right-click the computer usually reads a simple mouse click. fuck that! and the Surface Pro has no Fn key I can use to force the issue. this is unresolved. Ideas?
on Win 10 I liked that it had a Start button again, but hated the menu, didn’t stop to try to mess with customizing it, just went straight to that Classic Start Menu app. if I uninstalled Classic Start Menu, would the built-in customization give me pretty much an XP or 7 menu? or would I hate it anyway?
one of the things that bugs me greatly about both Win8 and Win10 is the confusion of the Control Panel(s), you have the “trad” CP and the “app” CP. and some controls in the “app” CP seem not to be mirrored in the “trad” CP I am accustomed to and vice versa. for starters, Update and Taskbar Transparency are in the “app” CP. but many detailed controls on stuff like Power Mgmt are in the “trad” CP. and if I search one CP for stuff I found in the other CP, it can’t be found. WTF???
is there any was to make “apps” (as opposed to traditional “applications”) appear less idiotic? Smaller fonts, better use of space, more info on screen, act like that computer screen is there to be used intelligently? Why does MS seem to think I want my laptop/desktop to act like it has a phone-sized screen?
so far am finding Edge “better/way faster” than IE, but since IE was so incredibly bad, that’s not saying much. Edge seems to hang a lot, and seems to parse the page layout with slightly odd use of space and font sizes a bit off (for instance, in Meh forums, the main post fonts a bit too large, the replies fonts a bit too small.) am not up with html etc, so hard to be more precise. perhaps it’s just me, am using Edge for the first time on a machine I never used before, have yet to install portable chrome/firefox/k-meleon/others.
any tips on making this experience better are appreciated. I know I now need to go read a years’s worth of tips and tricks web pages on win10.
one large q for me: I always log into my machines with a local login, not an MS account. I have an MS account I use for the appstore and various apps. I tend to find the apps incredibly annoying, and always install an “application” version of something if possible, thereby forfeiting some integration (dropbox, onenote, etc). I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on:
local vs MS account login
"apps" vs “applications”
non win10 stuff
regarding my xp netbook (Lenovo, neither mem or hd can be upgraded), wonder if I should put Linux on it? or keep xp as a sort of museum piece? (Several large, Fortune-500 sized companies I deal with have a number of special-purpose XP machines running, that they have no intention of upgrading, esp for certain CNC and machine tool uses.)
I have a mostly unused HP 14" chromebook with a gorgeous screen. I never got on with it. perhaps it’s the size - nowadays I tend to like smaller, highly portable, 14" seemed cumbersome. I do like the idea of of speedboot and since Google already knows more about me than I know, perhaps the privacy issues are imaginary. Hmm. what won’t run on a chromebook that I would really care about for common household use? if I gave a chromebook to an elderly non-techie relative who wants to browse, facebook, shop, and consume media, how well would that work?
hopefully, later this year, I will actually setup several TVs and some sort of media server. I can learn Linux or get help w it if needed - ubunto, debian, etc. so what am I likely to want to run for a home media center that isn’t a pita and doesn’t take up a lot of time? I suppose I will eventually start ripping all my still unwrapped Blu-Rays onto it.
btw, much thx to everyone.
@f00l For the media server I’m a fan of Plex. Free and has flavors for multiple OSes.
I wouldn’t run AVG over windows defender/MSE but only because AVG has become so bloated.
I’d also try Linux Mint on that netbook. You can make a live USB stick to try it out, and if your hardware is all supported then it could breathe new life into that machine.
@f00l don’t worry, microsoft engineers are working 24/7 to get edge to be just as large of an infection vector as internet explorer has always been!
I have decided to live and die with 7!
@mfladd you know you could run the upgrade and roll it back within 30 days if you don’t like it right?
@jbartus yup. I am making a “7” stand.
@mfladd okie dokie, just making sure. 7 is a great OS.
@jbartus But thanks for the help you offered. I appreciate it.
@mfladd yeah no worries happy to help. Still no email from you though!
@jbartus coming. Never expect me to be on time. Email address again, please.
@mfladd a 7" stand… is that what you call it?? Men! What is it with naming your parts???
@mikibell Hahahahahaha!
It’s Hammer time!
@mfladd jbartus[funny symbol goes here]mehmbersonly[dot]com
@jbartus members only? Are you old enough to remember those?
(I couldn’t resist)
@mfladd that’s the joke, yes.
When I get around to it (and doing more of them) (after Windows 10 leaves me alone finally) it’s going to be the site where I host all of the themes and scripts and such I’ve made / will make for the forums.
@jbartus giving uo…going to bed… 2 backpacks bought!
@mikibell what happened?!
@mfladd
If i had W7 i might stick. The machines that got 10’d came w W8 installed.
@mfladd just to be clear, you spelled it with an H when you emailed me right? Members Only is an active brand and I very much do not have an email address on their domain.
@f00l You held out for a whole year with 8? My god man…
@jbartus
Yeah i rarely used the W8 machines. Mostly for watching movies and connecting to some friends’ Servers Across The Seas via putty. Arranged to internet so that i might rarely notice how much i hated W8. When i did run it, ran most sw as portable.
Google already has my life, so am, for the time being, following path of least resistance re online stuff. I am not currently strong with The Force or other admirable character strengths. Maybe next month. Sigh.
@jbartus I have no clue…but after 2 days, hubby finally succeeded in upgrading my laptop…now I have to try my old software…sigh…
Sorting through old papers, I came across the (printed) howto for converting from Vista to Win7. Everything old is new again, including trepidation. That being said, I created a DVD and converted one Win7 machine to Win10, but left another one alone. This gives me an XP machine, a Vista brick (destined for Ubuntu soon), a Win7 machine, and a Win10 machine. Plus a few Android devices. I’m not sure I would have bothered, but it’s 100 F/heat index 103 here, and I am not going outside.
So Win 10 kept freezing on me and I decided to revert back to 7. Now Windows won’t start up. The Startup Repair program can’t fix it. Win 7 came pre installed so I don’t have a disk to try and reload it from. I had originally backed up (hopefully) any important media I had but I didn’t have time to image the entire drive for a backup as it was getting late in the last day to upgrade. Feeling kind of fucked… I’m due for an entirely new system but his isn’t how I wanted to go about it.
@cinoclav
I would think you could order or download a Win 7 restore disk from the manufacturer, or ebay, or Amazon. These are usually pretty cheap.
You ought to have a sticker on the machine w your MS license key, right?
@f00l I was wise enough to print out the keys before upgrading. At least that much I had time to do.
@cinoclav hey check here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7
might let you download the iso which you can burn to disk or make a usb drive?
@cinoclav
I dunno if you wanna do this, but if you get the disk or dl the image from the manufacturer, it will likely contain all the drivers.
No restore partition? Or did the Win10 upgrade wipe that?
@cinoclav I thought I read something about MS advertising that if W10 fucked up your computer with an upgrade MS would give you a laptop.
Seems you would be a good candidate for this!
/giphy Good Luck
@fjp999 that was a july promo that you bring in your laptop by noon to a Microsoft store and it will be upgraded that day or you get a free dell. its over now sadly
@cinoclav send them a lawyer letter threatening to sue. There’s precedence, they paid some lady $10K to go away!
If you didn’t mind 10 other than the issues you could do a clean install using the media creation tool to make a DVD/USB key to install from. Most issues with 10 people have had result from stuff that gets screwed up with the upgrade process.
@communist
@jbartus @cinoclav