06 July 2016

The switch to Windows 10

The free upgrade to Windows 10  from Windows, 7, 8 and 8.1 is supposed to end by the end of this month. On Sunday, following my month end backup to my hard drive on my old laptop, I decided to go for it.  Many others seem to have done the same. Today 33% of visitors to this blog used Windows 10, 32% Windows 7, 12% OS X, and 10% iOS (iPad).

I wish the upgrade had gone smoothly. I used the Windows icon in the right hand bottom tray and received a diagnostic which I followed only to be informed. "Service registration is missing or corrupt" and "Windows update error 0x80070057 . . .", neither of which were helpful.

Googling those messages suggested procedures to follow which only seemed to lead me back to the same messages.  Frustrating. Then I tried googling for how to upgrade and was able to download, verify and install over the course of a couple of hours ... only to end with a diagnostic that Windows 10 couldn't be installed. Even more frustrating. A bit more googling found the suggestion from Microsoft of trying a FixIt routine.

That worked. Why couldn;t they tell me that in the first place? Ten sof minutes later the computer was up and running in virtually the same appearabce I'd had with Windows 7.

My new laptop came with Windows 8.1 and I'd immediately upgraded to|Windows 10. It now performs much like a Windows 8.1 machine. I'd prefer it too to look like Windows 7. A program called Classic Shell supposedly can achieve much of that, but I've had enough of messing around with operating systems for the time being.

If you've been putting off upgrading, but intend to do so, now is the time.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've not done it yet John, and was not at all pleased that at first my laptop seemed to being high jacked to install Windows 10 whether I wanted to install it then or not. Thank heavens that ended. With your advice I will be sure to do it once I get back to the cottage and get everything safely backed up. Thank you. Cheers, BT

Terry Mulcahy said...

John,

My Windows 7 computer crashed on New Years Eve. I went out and bought a new one and purchased one with Windows 10 rather than Windows 8 (which I hated on my wife's laptop)and have had no problems since. Just had to get used to the new environment a little. Luckily Mozy managed to restore all my files for me, including all my genealogy files.

Terry

Anonymous said...

I tried it on a (lowend) 8.1 laptop & and it worked for about two hours before dying.
It cost me over 100$us to get it uninstalled.
I return to buying a new machine rather than trying to update.
Be sure to run the program to see if your computer can run win 10.

Anonymous said...

Many of my friends have struggled with the upgrade. I am lucky in that my husband, very skilled at these things, upgraded my computer from Windows 7 to 10. It took him about two hours to do so.

I have adjusted, but see that many folks are unhappy. Unhappy with mind-calming things such as Windows 7 games. I can get past that as my in-house techie also straightened that it.

But most infuriating of all is that I use my personal photos as wallpaper, and without notice, Windows 10 rotates them randomly to landscape when this is not how they were taken. I checked online to see if anyone else had this problem, and wow, did they ever.!! One person said it drove him 'batcrazy' as one has no say in the matter. Sure, your photos are still right way up in your photo log, but Windows 10 randomly decides to make them sideways. Big brother, eh?

Elayne Lockhart said...

Thank you John but after reading your message I'm not sure I can face those type of challenges and then sort it all out. What is the downside of not moving to Windows 10 and just waiting until I eventually get a new laptop? Any comments. Thanks. Elayne

DenaP:) said...

As the member of the family responsible for addressing all Windows operating system frustrations, far too many evenings and weekends were lost with this kind of nonsense. Made a conscious decision to replace all units with Mac. Happy to report I have never had to deal with an operating system issue since the switch. I highly recommend it.

Don said...

Hi John, I upgraded my Windows 7 desktop last winter. I got an unspecified error which displayed for about 10 seconds and then disappeared. The conversion started with the message "Don't worry about your files, they'll be there when we're done". They weren't. All my documents, videos and photos were gone. I did have backup. I learned mnnths later that my desktop documents were gone and I discovered I did not back up one of the important ones!

John McConkey said...

I have had experiences at both ends of the difficulty scale with computers I have upgraded to Windows 10. But ultimately they all were successful. The latest one was interesting. It was previously Windows 7 and got to the 99% point of installing Windows 10 but then didn't budge as I monitored it for several hours. I found out that the Windows 10 upgrade was actually competing with a concurrent Windows 7 update. Disabling the Windows 7 update service allowed the upgrade to complete within 10 minutes. When I did my first Windows 10 upgrade (last August from Windows 8.1) it was required to ensure that all outstanding updates were incorporated before starting the upgrade. Since November (with Windows 10 version 1511) this is not the case and files on the C drive are "guaranteed" preserved. Nevertheless a backup of important files is advisable. Which files do you backup? Look in the Users folder on your C drive for your account (and your wife's if appropriate). Backup desktop, documents, downloads, photos, videos and any other folders you deem important. This will cover most items but you may have folders not in the Users structure. So look at the C drive again. It contains the systems folders: Windows, Program Files, Program Data (don't bother with these). But you may also find some personal folders here. Check these to see if they contain any data worthy of backup.