Win10 Procrastinators: The End is Nigh!
erco
Posts: 20,256
Any other foot-draggers here with a computer or four like me forced to upgrade to Win10 before the July 29 deadline? A while ago I downloaded the 32- and 64-bit ISOs and burned to DVDs to help speed up the process. Last night I did my first, localroger's Craig tablet. It worked fine but still needed lots of downloads, nearly two hours total over our slowish DSL connection.
Anybody lose data or have any setbacks? As I posted in the Craig thread, the tablet lost audio when I tried a clean install, but worked fine when I upgraded and kept files intact.
Anybody lose data or have any setbacks? As I posted in the Craig thread, the tablet lost audio when I tried a clean install, but worked fine when I upgraded and kept files intact.
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So far I updated one Dell machine to Windows 10 64bit, it seems to work fine.
Perhaps I could say things have improved. Today a lot of software I use does not care if it's on Windows or Linux or Mac. MS even makes some of it, like VS Code.
'er in doors still runs XP. She has a bunch of programs that won't run on anything newer.
Perhaps for a giggle I'll upgrade one company laptop I have here. Let's see what happens....
The Win10 Bashing thread got closed.
Yes I upgraded(?) to win 10 from win 7- took a while but was amazed to see almost the same screen afterwards as before the change!
However
No FREECELL
winmail gone so no e-mail
Theres a work around I found for freecell (where I waste as much time as I do on the forums)
As for e-mail there is the built in 'Mail' (app)
After hunting for usernames and set up info for three (old) accounts that still receive mail and my current account it worked - but I didnt like the layout- much preferred winmail.
Incidentally had a similar problem with win 7 wouldn't run outlook express but was able to use winmail which was ok.
I use pop3 which means having all my mail downloaded and not left in the cloud - but havent yet found a way of merging them with new mails.
If I d/click on a .eml file from the windowsold folder it displays in 'Mail' ok so perhaps all I need to do is copy them to the new destination. time will tell.
Otherwise seems ok - everything else I've tried just works.
Dave
I could have dragged a heavy old Samsung laptop with Win 7 to California and back but luckily the boss agreed I should have something much lighter to travel around with.
Hence the Surface Pro 4.
What a God send. I could carry it with me easily everywhere. I could remain in touch with the mother ship no matter what airport or seedy bar I ended up in.
I could hold my head high in Starbucks surrounded by Mac using losers.
Unlike a tablet running Android or Apple whatever it is actually a real computer to do real work on. It has more grunt than my Debian PC at home, although the GPU is a bit slow.
Only one problem...The one crucial application I needed for my work in San Jose turned out to be unusable with the high resolution of the Surface display. It's only now I'm back home I have figured out how to get it to to display properly.
Now, how to firewall all the communications it does without asking me?
Doubtful, it's just an archival copy. In similar fashion, you can download free ISOs for Win7 & 8 all day from Digital River, but activating them is another matter.
IIRC you need to install & activate Win10 by July 29. You might be able to clone your current HD, upgrade that HD now, then set it aside for a while, continuing to use your current drive. 1 TB drives are $50 now, amazingly cheap.
New machines: wonderfully excellent for the average user. When setting up the install, disable all items in the first two option screens (there are 4 items on 2 screens, 8 total) as they are mostly the "big brother" items you may have heard about. Disable Cortana, it's useless unless you have never used a computer before in your life. Let Windows 10 run and update for at least a week before installing any Antivirus/Firewall/third party software, just use Windows Defender until Windows 10 says your "PC is up to date". Peruse the control panel for hidden gems that can be disabled to improve your computer's performance. Win10 has a lot of "features" that love to run in the background if you let them. Install Google Chrome, avoid MS Edge. Edge is still a very bulky browser and simple things like editing the URL in an existing shortcut are nearly impossible.
Upgrades: Welcome to nightmare city..... Here are my tips to those who are embarking on this trip.....
Uninstall ALL antivirus/firewall/filtering software prior to any upgrade. Yes, ALL, seriously, ALL.....
Download the ISO file that you can get to through the Media Creation Tool from the Microsoft site. I actually upgraded a Win8 machine by mounting to the ISO as a virtual drive and it worked perfectly.
Be patient upon each boot. While it may appear the you are done with the upgrade, you may find issues if you attempt to install other software, etc, until Win10 is completely happy being "up to date"
If Internet connects but acts as if it is not, wipe out any third party software that involves the internet (link scanners, antivirus, filters, optimizers, etc). Windows 10 WILL update a machine with AntiVirus software that is not actually compatible with Windows 10, thus rendering your internet dead, among other things. That's a double bug in my opinion.
Expect to do some start menu cleanup, especially for Windows 8 machines where you used the tablet style desktop.
Review the startup tab in Task Manager for anything that you can disable (like Java's update checking software) On that note, don't use Java, Edge turns into a boat anchor with it.
For other issues, google the problem, there are tons of Windows 10 issue posts out there. I have yet to have a problem finding any of the issues I have encountered somewhere already. It may take a while to digest through a lot of ignorant posts, but you will find solutions to try.
What will a Win10 upgrade cost after the deadline passes?
Once all the cool people have upgraded to Win10, will cybercrooks lose interest in attacking Win7?
My wife fearlessly completed two Win10 upgrades. OTOH, I may watch 29 July come and go. Nothing to gain...too much to lose.
You make a Linux install seem like a walk in the park. Which it mostly is now a days.
My wife, well 'er in doors, has recently taken to my Debian PC. It seems to do everything she needs.
It got there eventually. I actually liked the 8.1 interface better - the PC has a touchscreen though. Well, even with a mouse it looked better..
Anyway, lots of trouble getting windows defender running. I can confirm that there must be nothing with any similarity to antivirus installed, or defender won't run, and, worse, it will not give you any indication as to why. Nothing.
So, no Malwarebytes, and no Spybot search&destroy, even though the latter created no issues whatsoever with Microsoft Security Essentials (older name for Defender) on Windows 7 (another computer). CCleaner could stay though.
Clicked through most of the installation. Have no idea what Cortana is, so it's there. At least Windows Update can be found in its menu, which is good because it's not anywhere else to be found. 8.1 had it the same place as 7, so big change there. Cortana also has Defender in a more elaborate variant, which helped in figuring out what was going on.
So, it's done, but it's too early to say anything about how well it works.
The win7 machine (two, actually) won't be upgraded, they are in storage in the other location where we can't get at them.
Ok, I stand corrected, Digital River (MS' store) apparently stopped hosting ISOs last year: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/566303/microsoft-digital-river-iso-downloads-gone-for-good/
But when I called Microsoft and spoke to a tech last December, he steered me to http://getintopc.com/softwares/operating-systems/download-windows-8-pro-iso/ which worked fine.
http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/comment/1360436/#Comment_1360436
I managed to stop some of the sneaky comms to the home planet...
Told W10 I had a limited internet connection. Stopped some of it, but not all. But now every time I start Outlook I have to click to tell it to connect on a metered connection.
Still loses chars when I type, just like W7 before it. Occurs on multiple laptops so I expect its a timing bug.
Edge still goes to sleep (or is it sending info home??) every now and again.
Explorer when copying files sometimes puts up a window behind its open window with a message that halts the copy process until it gets input. Keep forgetting about this quirk.
Cannot run one of my old apps - Protel 3.1 pcb layout program. Presume its a 64-bit problem as it runs fine under W7 32bit.
Generally I am happy with W10 except that everything is found in a different place to previous versions. Things like the Device Drivers, etc, etc. Why cannot they leave everything in the same place??? Guess they have to do something so they can sell the courseware certification.
I'm debating if I want to snapshot the win7 vm on my Mac and see if it wants to upgrade...or gives me the incomparable hardware message like I got on my win7 desktop.
I thought my Protel99SE was old, but that's worse. I would migrate to Diptrace if they implemented some sensible suggestions I've made. Nothing beats the way that it is so easy to do anything in Protel in general due partly to inituitive keyb oard shortcuts, or just shortcuts for that matter.
Much of the things like Control Panel, Device Manager, Command Prompt, Event Viewer, Programs and Features ... can be found by simple right-click on the Windows logo / Start button.
Only I don't get on with the laptop format much. I like the idea that a Surface is a tablet that is also a full up PC. And also laptop'ish with it's floppy keyboard attached when need be.
Debian is running under VirtualBox on this Surface just fine. Headless mind you, no X Windows.
Troubleshooter fails
There are just some old programs that will not work under W10 64bit. Not sure if W10 32bit would work. So I keep another laptop just to run that program. It is not a major disaster. Its just that I know the program well, all its nuances, etc. It is my legal version with no real limitations other than it was written for W95 and doesn't even take all those W95 features on board.
I guess I could go for a full KDE install, I was just worried about eating up all the SSD on this machine.
How could that be a problem, I'm running Linux Mint 18 with the Cinnamon desktop and even with all the extras I have installed including Wine and VirtualBox the root partition is only using around 10GB of 20GB reserved. I know KDE chews up slightly more than that but not much.
8.1 has served me well. I use my computer for work, and I work all day. I can't afford any issues.
On top of that, I am developing some stuff that must be done by the 29th. I imagine this upgrade will take FOREVER and might cause problems with the software I'm writing.
Still not sure what to do.
17:15:39:27
http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/retirement?iso=20160729T235959&p0=1244&msg=End+of+freebie+Windows+10&font=hand
Andrew Williams
WBA Consulting