Windows 10

[fisherman7]

Hi all, wondering if anyone has upgraded to Windows 10? I keep free offers to do so but leary of changing from XP

[Ralph Field]

I switched from 7 to 10 without any difficulties.

[Raf]

moving from xp to 10 would be nice but if your machine is from the time dinosaurs roamed the land, it will be an unpleasant experience.

[dave524]

I didn't think the free offer was available to XP users, but I upgraded this laptop to 10 from 8 and works great even the new browser "Edge" works better the Internet Explorer, quote function works on this forum

Edited February 6, 2016 by dave524

[Terry]

I switched 5 laptops from xp to 10. All but one worked well. The one I added some more ram and it worked ok too

[davey buoy]

From 7 to 10 here a while ago,runs even better for me.

[cheaptackle]

It may not be the majority of users experience, in fact most may have no problems such as I've read above and good for those of you that have successfully upgraded to 10 with no problems.

New operating systems and software/applications always sound great and generate a lot of excitement when they're first released, but there's usually a period where they may not be all they're cracked up to be until enough errors are reported to generate updates with fixes...

This is just one of many horror stories out there but one I have first hand knowledge of ...

Google "windows10 start icon not working" to see one of the big problems currently plaguing Microsoft, and also look at the possible fixes. I have a new laptop with windows 7, states it's windows 10 compatible, that is part of the courses I'm currently taking. Another fellow in the class with the identical setup, who knows zilch about computers (it's his first exposure to them) upgraded to 10 when the (frequent) popup adivsed him to because he figured the computer was telling him to do it. Within 3 days his start icon stopped working, effectively making the laptop unusable at all. I spent about 3 hours trying all the recommended fixes with a service tech on the phone to guide me, my laptop displaying all the commands to try, none worked. Why? becausue all the fixes require an internet connection working on the affected computer, and there ain't no way to tell if you're connected when this happens until the effort fails. Fortunately for the other guy, the company that supplied our laptops also took the time to create system backups on cd's so he could do a full restore. Once I determined it was a waste of time to keep trying to fix Windows 10, I told him good luck, call the tech, do the restore with him, ya don't need me!, and went back to learning other stuff listening to him swearing about the long boring process, put the disc in, take the disc out... etc.

I don't know, because the other user can't tell me, if there were any updates done to his Windows 10 AFTER he installed it. It could well be that a fix is already available but as I've already made my mind up I'm not gonna worry about it just yet.

I'll do the windows 10 at the last possible moment and hope they have all the bugs fixed by then...

 

Michael

[Beans]

Switched from 8.1 to windows 10 with no problem...

 

Have run into the odd site that is not compatable with "Edge"...I then go to MSN site and recall the site from there...

[GBW]

home pc is still 7 but I changed the laptop to 10 and it runs just fine. It updates all the time for those bugs Michael is talking about. Check the MIN RAM for Win 10 and see if your device meets that before you do the free upgrade.

[smitty55]

I'm not positive about this but I heard it's only free to start then after that there may be yearly charges. Besides that, the reported privacy issues are plenty enough to keep me far away from it. Microsoft has also snuck in some of those user trackers into Win 7 and 8 in some of their updates, the sneaky buggers

Cheers

Edited February 6, 2016 by smitty55

[wallyboss]

I do not want to upgrade to Win10 and if you don't want to either here is a link that has the steps to stop that annoying Win 10 popup. You might have to do the steps 3-4 times but it works . I did it on 17 Win 7 servers at work this week and my personal laptop.

 

https://techjourney.net/disable-remove-get-windows-10-upgrade-reservation-notification-system-tray-icon/

[Fisherman]

I tried it and then found my canon printer wouldn't work unless you hooked it up with cable. The canon camera wouldn't do downloads via wifi either. Reverted to W7 and prompty lost a pile of old email files. A bunch of the W7 games are not on W10 either.

[misfish]

My IT guys says stay with what I have til a new pc is needed. So, here I sit til then.

[206]

Windows 95 - 10 it's been the same for years!! you still have all the same options you have always had with a lil more cosmetic tweaks

 

Have no fear.

 

run the check I have an older machine that the graphics aren't enough to take upgrade to win 10...they want you to buy new lol

Edited February 6, 2016 by 206

[Canuck2fan]

I am finding most of the problems with the upgrade on a machine that passes the check that says win 10 will work on it, involves the chair to keyboard interface. That can be real tricky to fix sometimes...

 

As for old peripherals not working with Win 10 it is so EASY to blame Microsoft when the truth is the manufacturer as decided to orphan your old purchase by not offering updated drivers. Perhaps so you will rush out and buy a replacement... Remember how much money was wasted by consumers over Y2K, companies and CEO's made trillions though.

[atvaholic]

I have 3 computers I have upgraded to Windows 10 without issues. However if its an older computer (you stated you have XP) I would avoid the upgrade. XP runs much quicker.

[adam lancia]

I switched from 8.1 to 10 without any problems. however, when I bought my laptop a few years ago, I was sure to buy one that was "performance future proofed". What I mean by that is I have tons of RAM and processing speed to spare, even compared to current laptops (1.7 GHz processor with 6g RAM). I could see the upgrade being unsuccessful if you're running an older laptop that won't be able to keep up with the new OS. If you're going to do it, backup everything to an external hard drive, then completely wipe the computer, then install 10 from scratch.

 

I would say you're at a crossroads between upgrading the OS, sticking with your current setup, or purchasing a new laptop with 10 already installed (or one with good specs and 8 as the OS). Upgrading from 8 shouldn't be problematic at all.

[NewHips]

Just got a new desktop, loaded with windows 10 home............I really like it.

 

We tried in on my older desktop that had xp........didn't work well,,,,wouldn't link up with my wireless and other driver issues, revered to windows 7 that worked fine.

Edited February 7, 2016 by NewHips

[GBW]

I am finding most of the problems with the upgrade on a machine that passes the check that says win 10 will work on it, involves the chair to keyboard interface. That can be real tricky to fix sometimes...

 

As for old peripherals not working with Win 10 it is so EASY to blame Microsoft when the truth is the manufacturer as decided to orphan your old purchase by not offering updated drivers. Perhaps so you will rush out and buy a replacement... Remember how much money was wasted by consumers over Y2K, companies and CEO's made trillions though.

very valid and true point.

[Oggie]

I'm on a limited WiFi connection and the W10 updates were just chewing through my monthly data. I finally had to shut the update function off and I go to the local library every week to downlload updates.

 

It did work well though other than that.

[SirCranksalot]

Microsoft seems quite persistent in trying to get me to move to 10. That in itself makes me a bit suspicious. what's they catch? Do they get me hooked and then start charging?

 

Any geeks that I've spoken to have cautioned me about switching to 10. Life is complicated enough already---I don't need extra headaches!!

[Canuck2fan]

If you're going to do it, backup everything to an external hard drive, then completely wipe the computer, then install 10 from scratch.

 

I would say you're at a crossroads between upgrading the OS, sticking with your current setup, or purchasing a new laptop with 10 already installed (or one with good specs and 8 as the OS). Upgrading from 8 shouldn't be problematic at all.

 

I agree clean installs are better, so if you are going to accept the upgrade, do a BACKUP of all your data and make sure you have access to the installation sources for all your programs and apps you want to keep. INCLUDING your old OS should you want to revert to it if something doesn't work in win 10.

 

Then make sure you have a VALID windows key for either 7, 8, 8.1 or 10... You will need that key to validate windows 10.

 

The above method is a bit quicker than when Microsoft forced you to do the upgrade, then wait until you could see it was validated, before doing a clean install. Before an update last October, using an old win key wouldn't validate a clean install of Win 10.... However, once you had validated the upgrade you could do clean installs and Microsoft's servers would recognize your system specs and validate a fresh install.

 

The advantage IMHO to doing it the old way, was I was able to make sure it would all work with my older peripherals, and programs before wiping out my previous version of windows. Without having to do a complete reinstall of everything if I didn't like win 10 or it didn't work with something older I wanted to keep.

 

The old way still had the option of reverting back to Win 7 and not losing anything or having to reinstall any programs or apps that doing a clean install of Win 10 I didn't like or couldn't use would have involved.

Edited February 8, 2016 by Canuck2fan

[smitty55]

I'm not positive about this but I heard it's only free to start then after that there may be yearly charges. Besides that, the reported privacy issues are plenty enough to keep me far away from it. Microsoft has also snuck in some of those user trackers into Win 7 and 8 in some of their updates, the sneaky buggers

Cheers

Yea it's getting real bad now. Just heard of another report today of a fellow student's OS being automatically upgraded to Win10 without his authorization. Like I mentioned earlier about MS including whatever they want in their updates, now it can include tons (over 6Gb) of Win10 files just waiting to be installed.

 

The more I hear about win10 the scarier it gets. This quote from a real good site..."Windows 10 has become controversial due to Microsoft's evolution of their Windows operating system platform into a service which, among other things, aggressively monitors and reports on its users activities." In other words you have no assumption of privacy anymore as far as Microsoft is concerned. For all I know there could even be keyloggers built in to the OS. Scary stuff folks for the likes of us with "pcs" but what about corporate usage??

 

So my strong advice is to NOT do the upgrade. They just want to fool everyone into believing that newer is better but it's a poison pill IMO. That's why they're pushing it so hard . And guess what? If you do the upgrade you can't go back without a clean install of the earlier OS. So save/find/d/l your old install disks. Make an image disc of your hard drive and save it as a backup that you can reinstall on a formatted drive.

 

Here's my tip of the d/m/y hehe. Just found out from my instructor today about this neat little utility that will protect your privacy and even clean your system while preventing from win10 unwanted installation. Its called Never10. It doesn't install anything on your system at all, it just does it's registry changes etc., then you click the appropriate boxes after it's done the scan.

 

Here's the link... https://www.grc.com/never10.htm Go to freeware/utilities/never10 and download. Use it and and you will feel cleansed and protected. Also excellent for command line use in an enterprise environment. This Steve Gibson guy is amazing from what I've seen so far. His Spinrite proggy can revive a hard disk to retrieve data that was thought lost.

 

I hope this helps to warn folks about the way things are going now in this world of ours. Remember those old futuristic sci-fi flicks where big brother knew everything about everybody. Lol it's here now. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, most phones have gps and can be tracked, even new cars can be remotely controlled once vehicle systems are hacked into.

 

I'm not paranoid but Ive been around for 60 years now and I'm still leery of any entity that wants to know everything about everyone. Just doesn't sit right with me ya know. Technology now makes it so possible. Makes sense to me.

 

Cheers folks

Edited April 13, 2016 by smitty55

[muddler]

I've used GWX Control Panel to stop Win 10 nags and installation. It seems to do the job easily and effectively. It's free.

 

Just to add to the problems of Win 10, I have noticed that on a lot of systems that Win 10 somehow no longer accepts some HP printers. The printer is not in the device manager nor in the printer list. After a few days/weeks Win10 will find the printer and it works fine again. It is one of the updates of Win 10 that does this. It is very annoying to a lot of the seniors that I do repairs for as they tend to panic about this.

 

I have advised all NOT to install Win10 but they do anyway.

 

 

 

muddler

 

muddler

[fishing n autograph]

My windows got updated without my authorization. I woke up one morning and it was loaded and installing into my laptop. I'm not happy at all