Poll: Do You Plan to Upgrade to Windows 10?

[W2R]

Here's an update on my Win 10 upgrade and the fiasco with the WiFi adapter card.

I turned the computer off yesterday, deciding that I had enough of it for one day. Turned it on today. Still did not work, but the process was not hung. Went into "Network Connections" and saw that all the WiFi networks, mine and the neighbors, were identified. Tried to log into my router. Nope, did not work. The task did not crash though.

Went to "Device Manager" (good thing they keep the name), and deleted the WiFi driver from "Network Adapter" category. Scan for new hardware. It did not see that adapter card. Clicking around for a bit, and happened to see it now reappear in "Network Adapter" list. Clicked "Update Driver". The doggone thing now worked.

So, it was really a Gremlin. Something never changes from earlier versions of Windoze. When something does not work, delete its driver, and let it reinstall. Twice or three times may be the charm. Sigh...

(bold emphasis mine)

Aha!!! Congratulations on conquering this issue.

I just KNEW it was a gremlin...

 

[Earl E Retyre]

I upgraded to Windows 10 a long time ago and had no pains at all. Just this week it asked me to upgrade to the latest version. When I tried, I did not have enough disk space free (it takes a lot of space). So, it took me a while to free up space and downloaded the latest version. That was a mistake because then I started having issues. Screens locking up, performance issues, apps asking me for logins, etc. Fortunately, there is an easy way to restore to the previous version of windows 10 - which was very fast and easy to do. And now I am back to normal.

 

[NW-Bound]

I just KNEW it was a gremlin...

Should we be grateful that MS does not write software for our air traffic control, banking system, nuclear power plant control, future autonomous cars, etc... ? Imagine gremlins everywhere.

Oh wait! We don't know everything that MS is involved in, do we?

 

[ejman]

Should we be grateful that MS does not write software for our air traffic control, banking system, nuclear power plant control, future autonomous cars, etc... ? Imagine gremlins everywhere.

Oh wait! We don't know everything that MS is involved in, do we?

I think I read someplace that a lot of that stuff runs on Linux. As I understand it, Linux was developed by non paid or lowly paid amateurs that do it just for the fun of it. I think we are in good hands...

 

[bUU]

Should we be grateful that MS does not write software for our air traffic control, banking system, nuclear power plant control, future autonomous cars, etc... ? Imagine gremlins everywhere.

Microsoft does write other software, which is mission critical, and doesn't manifest the kinds of issues that are often found in all consumer-grade software.

I think I read someplace that a lot of that stuff runs on Linux.

And some of that is crap. It all depends.

 

[NW-Bound]

Microsoft does write other software, which is mission critical, and doesn't manifest the kinds of issues that are often found in all consumer-grade software.

That's good. I think they have a different kind of programmers for those works.

I have done software for a flight-critical autoland autopilot. One in that job cannot have the mentality of many programmers: let the users try it out to see what happens. Your mistake can kill a lot of people, ruin your company and your career, if they don't catch you and fire you first. No horsing around.

 

[harley]

Even in remotest Africa, Windows 10 nagware ruins your day: Update burns satellite link cash

When you're stuck in the middle of the Central African Republic (CAR) trying to protect the wildlife from armed poachers and the Lord's Resistance Army, then life's pretty tough. And now Microsoft has made it tougher with Windows 10 upgrades.

The Chinko Project manages roughly 17,600 square kilometres (6,795 square miles) of rainforest and savannah in the east of the CAR, near the border with South Sudan. Money is tight, and so is internet bandwidth. So the staff was more than a little displeased when one of the donated laptops the team uses began upgrading to Windows 10 automatically, pulling in gigabytes of data over a radio link.

And it's not just bandwidth bills they have to worry about.

"If a forced upgrade happened and crashed our PCs while in the middle of
coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands," said one member of the team.

It's a little overly dramatic, but interesting.

 

[explanade]

I'm thinking about dual booting with Linux, possibly wiping Windows from my HP laptop.

No longer interested in running Quicken for the retirement planner.

Wondering if there's something better out there for photo editing and viewing though than Lightroom.

 

[NW-Bound]

So, with July 29th deadline approaching, I went ahead and converted more PCs to Win 10. The idea is as a poster mentioned earlier, that is to register the machines on Win 10 even though I may revert the machines back to Win 7 if I do not like what I see.

My wife PC upgrade went off without a hitch. She's learning to use it now ("where the heck do they put the power off button?").

Then, I converted a 3rd desktop. This one hung at the "Getting Updates" step, same as the 1st desktop, but this one does not have WiFi and is connected by a LAN cable to the router. What the heck?

After about 3 hours of "not Getting Updates", I canceled out of the installation. Then, I restarted it, but tell it to skip the "Getting Updates" step (I am installing from a DVD as I did the other 2 desktops).

Will see how it runs this time. The process is still like crapshoot.

 

[W2R]

My wife PC upgrade went off without a hitch. She's learning to use it now ("where the heck do they put the power off button?").

Great! Tell her to right click on the windows icon on the lower left, and choose "shut down or sign out".

Sorry you're having issues upgrading your other computers but I'm sure you will manage to figure everything out.


P.S. - - maybe a lot of people are upgrading right now due to the impending deadline, and that is the problem? I have no idea.

 

[NW-Bound]

Yes, I already showed her. She will have to click around to find "stuff". I told her if she does not like it, I will restore everything back to where it was.

 

[NW-Bound]

By the way, the screen font on the 1st converted desktop was crappy, compared to what it was before. I spent about 15 minutes adjusting ClearType font and also various settings in the video adapter, but it is still crappy on this 22" 1920x1080 LCD.

Why does MS have to screw up something that worked well before? Oh, well, it would not be the 1st time. New and young programmers came in, wanted to do everything in a "new and better" way, and in the process screwed up something that they should have left alone.

 

[W2R]

Never had that happen, NW-Bound. My sympathies!

I think it's probably been a much easier process for me, because I bought a brand new laptop last summer with W10 pre-installed.

I still worry about Microsoft stealing my information and selling it to Madison Avenue or nefarious three letter agencies, but others online tell me that these are just unfounded rumors. Oh well. This is the only problem I have with W10 thus far. I went through the settings carefully and repeatedly to try to ensure my privacy and security. Onward and upward, as they say.

As an operating system it has worked flawlessly (and fast!) for me.

 

[NW-Bound]

I think it's probably been a much easier process for me, because I bought a brand new laptop last summer with W10 pre-installed...

As an operating system it has worked flawlessly (and fast!) for me.

I often wonder if there's collusion in the PC industry to force people to buy new "stuff". Does anybody have sales statistics to see if sales of hardware go up after a major Windows update and many still useful PCs get hobbled?

About "fast", well I think my wife's PC is slower after the update, but then it may not be. I will wait for her to tell me that I mess up her machine.

 

[NW-Bound]

And I found another thing that Win 10 takes away.

Under Win 7 on that 1st converted desktop PC, I installed a virtual Win XP machine so that I could run older engineering and scientific software. That virtual Win XP no longer works.

 

[W2R]

I often wonder if there's collusion in the PC industry to force people to buy new "stuff". Does anybody have sales statistics to see if sales of hardware go up after a major Windows update and many still useful PCs get hobbled?

Really I don't know or care too much, NW-Bound. I needed a new laptop anyway, and would have bought one half a year earlier had I not heard that W10 was on its way. Those last few months with the old laptop were torture since it had so many problems.

 

[ejman]

Never had that happen, NW-Bound. My sympathies!

I think it's probably been a much easier process for me, because I bought a brand new laptop last summer with W10 pre-installed.

I still worry about Microsoft stealing my information and selling it to Madison Avenue or nefarious three letter agencies, but others online tell me that these are just unfounded rumors. Oh well. This is the only problem I have with W10 thus far. I went through the settings carefully and repeatedly to try to ensure my privacy and security. Onward and upward, as they say.

As an operating system it has worked flawlessly (and fast!) for me.

I always assume that anything I do online will be available for the world to see. Fortunately it seems my electronic persona is so mellow and uninteresting that so far everyone that's poked keels over from boredom. So I left the Win 10 default settings alone. Have to say though that Cortana hasn't improved much - apparently she doesn't like what I like and refuses to learn much of anything.

 

[bUU]

I often wonder if there's collusion in the PC industry to force people to buy new "stuff".

Why would there need to be collusion? No company earns money on product purchases made years ago, and the typical American consumer is myopically fixated on the price they pay today for things, so there is no incentive to support old purchases beyond that which is absolutely required by explicit promises made at time of purchase. That's a far simpler explanation for what you instead posit could be collusion, and the simplest explanation is often the best.

As it is, the success rate of Windows 10 upgrades seems shockingly high given how many different pieces of third-party software were out there and in a position to interfere with the upgrade process' smooth success. I don't think anyone other than Microsoft did a fair test of the upgrade process with boxes that never saw third-party software.

 

[NW-Bound]

My suggestion of "collusion" was in jest. Unintentional sh*t happens frequently enough with computers that nobody needs to plan for it.

Anyway, here's what happened with my 3rd desktop Win 10 upgrade.

After restarting the update because the "Getting Updates" hang the machine, I checked to see the message declaring "Installing Win 10... Your PC will restart several times". I then went to bed, leaving it running.

This morning, found the machine back at the old Win 7 desktop with a message "Win 10 Installation Failed". No further explanation. Hah!

I am restarting it again, hoping to catch a message saying how it failed. Seems to be stuck at 16% complete. Whoever said that "insanity is keep trying something, expecting a different result"?

Anyway, meanwhile, whenever I turned off the 1st desktop that was converted to Win 10, it declared that some processes had an error. "The instruction at <address> references memory at <address>, which cannot be read". There seems to be no ill effect, however.

And I just used the 2nd desktop converted to Win 10, the one belongs to my wife, to print a one-page form to my trustworthy HP Postscript printer. It took Microsoft Edge 5 minutes to print that single-page PDF file. Aye, aye, aye....

I had to use Microsoft Edge to print because my version of Adobe now fails to run. Aye, aye, aye...

 

[explanade]

There's suppose to be a big anniversary update in a week.

 

[Ian S]

Ugh! I've spent hours over the weekend trying to upgrade to WIN10 with no success. The process gets much of the way through then fails and stupidly says "Something went wrong..." I can't even get the MediaCreation tool to work and now I don't even have the nag thingy shown. I had reserved through that but it's never given me the opportunity to upgrade via that process. A friend has a DVD so I may try that. At this point, I may just stay with WIN7 and at some point make my system a dual boot with a purchased OEM version of WIN10. I can get WIN10 Pro for $125 at Fry's Electronics.

 

[Another Reader]

The pop-ups are getting more annoying, now with countdown clocks. The Windows 7 desktop hasn't been on-line since this started and the Windows 8 computer seems to be fine as is. Why mess with (relative) success? I may click the "decline" button before too long, although I'm kind of interested in Microsoft's tactics as we get to the bitter end.

 

[aja8888]

As it is, the success rate of Windows 10 upgrades seems shockingly high given how many different pieces of third-party software were out there and in a position to interfere with the upgrade process' smooth success. I don't think anyone other than Microsoft did a fair test of the upgrade process with boxes that never saw third-party software.

Why should this be so shocking?

I mean, Microrsoft has had decades of practice selling upgrades OS's and scores of Service Packs? This should be duck soup. They probably employ thousands of software engineers who are working on this stuff all the time.

 

[NW-Bound]

... here's what happened with my 3rd desktop Win 10 upgrade.

After restarting the update because the "Getting Updates" hang the machine, I checked to see the message declaring "Installing Win 10... Your PC will restart several times". I then went to bed, leaving it running.

This morning, found the machine back at the old Win 7 desktop with a message "Win 10 Installation Failed". No further explanation. Hah!

I am restarting it again, hoping to catch a message saying how it failed. Seems to be stuck at 16% complete. Whoever said that "insanity is keep trying something, expecting a different result"?...

So, this 3rd attempt to install Win 10 on this particular machine stalled at "16% complete" for a looong time, something like 3 hours, before throwing up its hand, declaring "Win 10 installation failed". Still no clue offered.

In the process of shutting down the machine, I noticed this little nagware from Oracle Java pleading to be allowed to update. Sure, go ahead, you bastard.

Then, it occurred to me that perhaps this bugger blocked Win 10 installation, causing it to fail?

So, I restarted Win 10 for the 4th time on this machine. It sailed right through that "16% complete", and is now at 45% and counting while I am posting this. Son of a gun!

Did Oracle do that on purpose?

 

[pb4uski]

Will Quicken 2014 run on Win 10? Only reservation I have about converting at this point and I don't care to buy Quicken earlier than necessary.