Windows 10

PPBart said:
OK, after resisting all MS prompts and admonitions for months, I have this afternoon upgraded one of my PC's to Win 10. Initially I planned to do the clean install, and prepared a flash drive; then I decided to first just do the upgrade and see how that worked. Bottom line is that I'm surprised and pleased (at least, so far) with the result. The upgrade installed without a hitch, everything seems to work, all my files are just where I left them, and the system seems to run a bit faster. Guess now I need to figure out what's new and useful to me!
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I haven't fresh installed Win10 and so far no problem on my laptop, tablet and desktop :)
 
The weird kinks and issues I've come across with an upgrade over install will sometimes take a while to show up. If it works for ya, then great, but I definitely have had better experiences with a clean install.

Speaking of, once the the Anniversary is out I need to do another clean install. It's about that time again, and I've been having a lot of issues with USB devices just killing themselves.
 
Punk said:
I haven't fresh installed Win10 and so far no problem on my laptop, tablet and desktop :)
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My work laptop was upgraded from Windows 8 > 8.1 > 10 and I haven't had any issues either, but on my home PC I always do a fresh install.
 
I've had a few issues with clean and upgrade. Although minimal issues with the clean install, most of mine are with upgrades.

Husbands Computer - Upgraded: 1) Playback devices randomly takes upwards of 30 seconds to open for some reason. Lucky, because he uses this a lot to switch between speakers and headphones.
2) Explorer randomly just won't open. This means whenever you try to open any type of folder it just refuses to actually open. Must either restart explorer or sometimes computer
3) Can't for the life of us get 3 monitors to output at once

My laptop - Upgraded: 1) Sluggish
2) Crashing was fairly common. Ctl Alt Del was never working when I needed it
3) Wifi would never connect on startup. With every boot I'd have to right click the wireless and click "troubleshoot problems" to get it to go again
4) Start menu sometimes didn't want to open, and every time it did open it was always with a delay.
-Probably a couple more things I don't remember

Same Laptop - Fresh Install + Install SSD: 1) Not sluggish anymore
2) Start menu still has a slight delay
3) Some random crashes, not near as often though


My Desktop - Upgraded: 1) Upgrades likes to fail, for some reason this one seems to upgrade at stupid times which causes this.
2) Some random crashes, but not terribly often
I'm afraid to fresh install this one, it came with Windows 8 and the activation seems to be very weird when I tried to clean install. Ended up have to ghost the original drive when I installed my SSD. I guess I'm old fashioned, I'm used to just installing and putting in my product key again.

Work Computer - Upgraded: 1) Sluggish
2) Windows Live Mail likes to just sit there at the splash screen sometimes. Need to reboot computer to get it to work again
3) Google Chrome like to not open sometimes, but not near as bad as Mail.

I'm amazed at how much it affects each computer differently. I know I'm forgetting tons of random stuff that's happened to these computers, but I've not had very good luck with the upgrade. Doing a clean install definitely helps, but it's still not as stable as Windows 7 and 8 in my experience.
 
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I hope Cortana still doesn't work in Denmark. Read that they've made it near impossible to disable, even with Group Policy editing.
 
Are you running a non-insider preview? Smart people (Wendell from Tek Syndicate) said it's possible in the preview, but M$ would remove it in actual release.
It's super easy to disable now for sure.
 
The Anniversary update was kind of sterile. No colorful splash screens and such…bummer.

The Start Menu still sucks. Why doesn't Microsoft let the user create and control folders? I've still got folders left over from Windows 7 that I can't do crap with in 10 without using a third party app.

Windows Explorer. Somebody please slap the spit out of the Explorer developers. Why in heaven is there no dual pane option, every third party Explorer clone has this option. I thought for sure that Windows 10 would eventually change this.

Why mess with the sticky notes? What the hell happened to the original font? I can't just grab a note and move it anymore, now I have to click on the note and then grab it and move it. Annoying as hell.

I know, a lot of excessive whining...but I feel better though.
 
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Just FYI, you can still activate Windows 10 using a Windows 7 (and probably 8/8.1) key still. Did it today.

So basically they just removed the "upgrade" functionality and nothing else has changed. Gotta do it manually.

Edit: We're testing out various activation means for still installing 10 so I'll update more tomorrow.
 
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That's really nice, Darren. Hope it stays.
Yesterday I installed Windows 10 while offline -> chipset+LAN driver -> told it to stop installing device drivers automatically -> used DDU (also sets some settings to stop automatic driver installation) -> Installed latest AMD driver -> Connected LAN cable -> Windows Update starts installing an AMD driver...
I really can't fathom how they can be this bad at coding.
 
Jiniix said:
That's really nice, Darren. Hope it stays.
Yesterday I installed Windows 10 while offline -> chipset+LAN driver -> told it to stop installing device drivers automatically -> used DDU (also sets some settings to stop automatic driver installation) -> Installed latest AMD driver -> Connected LAN cable -> Windows Update starts installing an AMD driver...
I really can't fathom how they can be this bad at coding.
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I've not once ever had Windows 10 try and overwrite my AMD driver, except in the instance where the AMD driver was super old. Try downloading the driver FIRST, completely disconnect from the internet. DDU. Reboot. Install downloaded driver. Reboot. Reenable internet. That's how I've always done it if's needed. Now AMD just auto updates itself and prompts me to do an update as needed.

johnb35 said:
Probably has something to do with this here.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/1/12...ws-10-free-upgrade-still-available?yptr=yahoo
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I'd heard about this also. Did nothing like that. Just a clean install using a flash drive, skip activation during install, and then type in Win7 product key once installed.

@spirit confirmed that activating a key still works even before I tried it.
 
This Windows 10 Anniversary update worked on my PC no problem, but every other laptop/pc has failed at some point in the update to 1607 and reverted back to 1511
 
Today I had a machine at work that I did a clean install of Windows 7 on. Activated it with the key on the bottom of computer for Windows 7 Home Premium and then used a flash drive created with Windows Media Creation tool to upgrade 10. Still activated. So... yeah... you can still get Windows 10 no problem. The ONLY thing that seems to have been changed is the upgrade built into the OS. The upgrade I did today still kept all previous data and wasn't a clean wipe.
 
Darren said:
Try downloading the driver FIRST, completely disconnect from the internet. DDU. Reboot. Install downloaded driver. Reboot. Reenable internet. That's how I've always done it if's needed. Now AMD just auto updates itself and prompts me to do an update as needed.
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I always install everything that can be installed offline before even connecting the Windows 10 to the internet.
It might make "sense" to let Windows install it first via Update, then DDU. But what really made me mad is that I used the latest driver. Like, AMD stopped making new drivers for the HD 6950 since 15.7.1/16.2.1beta, so unless M$ had developed their own Win10 fix or something, they're just messing with me.
 
Jiniix said:
I always install everything that can be installed offline before even connecting the Windows 10 to the internet.
It might make "sense" to let Windows install it first via Update, then DDU. But what really made me mad is that I used the latest driver. Like, AMD stopped making new drivers for the HD 6950 since 15.7.1/16.2.1beta, so unless M$ had developed their own Win10 fix or something, they're just messing with me.
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What driver version does W10 install? I totally get the annoyance/frustration with W10 overriding it but can't fault them too much if they're just reinstalling the same driver.
 
I didn't look at the version numbers of my own install, but I tried comparing the numbers from CCC to the release notes online, and the numbers weren't even the same formatting. But it still works, and I need it tomorrow (LAN PC :D) so I left it be.
 
It probably threw off Windows by having an older card that isn't updated anymore. I've only ever had Windows install a video card driver when the current driver is the basic Microsoft Display Adapter. On both my Nvidia laptop and AMD desktop, MS never touched my GPU drivers when I updated them myself. Like I said, probably just weirded out by older cards.

Windows 10 is incredibly helpful for me at work with drivers. Instead of going to the manufacturer's website for driver updates I just tell Windows to search for update and then reboot once it's done. It has never NOT installed a driver I needed. I feel like for the vast majority of users (old people and tech illiterate), this is a massive help. For power users like us it can provide some weird quirks. Works a whole lot better than the drivers in 7 did, that's for sure.

Edit: Apparently the Anniversary Update can screw up your non OS drives. Seen a few people online mention it. I have a 120GB SSD with W10 on it, 1TB internal HDD for games and storage, and an external 1TB USB HDD for movies/shows and other random stuff that is always hooked up. My external is no longer seen by Windows Explorer and Disk Management simply marks it as "Unallocated". Don't want to deal with it now but hopefully all of my games and TV shows didn't just get nuked.

I'd advise disconnecting any external HDD's before you do the upgrade, or even anything apart from your OS drive.
 
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