Thirty-day Win10 experiment lasts only a week

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	TOP STORY Thirty-day Win10 experiment lasts only a week
	By Lincoln Spector Using savvy security software is an important part of staying safe online. But just how effective is it? You can’t depend on your experience — or mine. It was intended as a month-long immersion in Windows 10 and a test of using the new OS on a hybrid laptop. But the experiment ended after just seven days. It turned out that upgrading a hybrid laptop/tablet was a trial of BSoDs and compatibility issues.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/thirty-day-win10-experiment-lasts-only-a-week/ (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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I too gave a T100 but have experienced none of these issues after using windows10 for nearly a month.
I gave had some issues but these were fixed by installing the correct drivers.
I use chrome as my default browser and haven’t experienced any issues.
I can’t comment on the other particular software issues as I don’t use those applications

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My ASUS T100TA runs Win10 with few problems although I have not used an e-reader. The mouse pointer sometimes disappears from Chrome if I detach and re-attach the keyboard. Restarting Chrome fixes this – I have to exit the browser and the background processes. I had several FFoD screens but these have not reocurred recently. I have updated ATK and touchpad drivers from the Asus website.

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I have had exactly the same problems with Windows 10. But my machine is a custom built desktop PC… ao it’s not someting limited to just a few types of machine. I also experienced at least 2 other serious problems:
1 I received a BSOD – with error message “CRITICAL PROCESS DIED” – on boot-up. This prevented me from even accessing Windows… thank heavens for a current back-up.
2. No matter what I tried I could NOT get drag and drop to work.
Methinks there are still too many bugs yet to be sorted out – so I have also rolled back to Windows 7 (which still works just fine).
I will be sitting on my hands – and using Windows 7 – for at least the next 9 months!

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I ordered a Lenovo S21e on the day Win10 was announced. And I upgraded to Win10 as soon as the laptop arrived. I proceeded to strip out and turn off the junk. Then the start menu disappeared. I searched and found something from March. It didn’t work. So I did an advanced Google search and only searched in the prior week. And I found a post from a Microsoft employee telling how to fix.

So my comments to the author, who was only finding Win 8.1 answers. First, you need to put Windows 10 as part of the search criteria. And then for something like this, you need to limit the time frame.

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I was an early adopter of Windows 10 starting with the Technical Previews. I have it installed (by upgrade) on three systems: A Nextbook Flexx 11, A Dell Optiplex 780 and a Vizio CA-24. So far I have had zero problems. The Dell is my Python/QT developer system and I’ve got a little of everything on it. Basically if it ran in Windows 7 it runs under Windows 10. One note, though… X64 Technical Preview would NOT install on my supposedly X64 Atom in the Flexx 11. Says I have a 32bit OS and a 64bit Processor. But, I don’t think the Atom x64 is a true x64. If yours says that you have a 64bit OS I’d wager that, that is the problem. (The Upgrade/Download should have caught it, though.)

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your problem was almost surely due to upgrading before you were notified by Msoft that your machine was ready. That will not happen “as soon as it arrives.” You should have updated Windows and the applied for an upgrade. When all of your drivers etc are available, you will get a notification from M’soft and you are good to go.

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your problem was almost surely due to upgrading before you were notified by Msoft that your machine was ready. That will not happen “as soon as it arrives.” You should have updated Windows and the applied for an upgrade. When all of your drivers etc are available, you will get a notification from M’soft and you are good to go.

I ordered a Lenovo S21e on the day Win10 was announced. And I upgraded to Win10 as soon as the laptop arrived. I proceeded to strip out and turn off the junk. Then the start menu disappeared. I searched and found something from March. It didn’t work. So I did an advanced Google search and only searched in the prior week. And I found a post from a Microsoft employee telling how to fix.

So my comments to the author, who was only finding Win 8.1 answers. First, you need to put Windows 10 as part of the search criteria. And then for something like this, you need to limit the time frame.

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Since I have to support clients systems, I am usually an early adopter. I have actively been using Windows 10 since Build 10074 or about June 1. I have done multiple test installations on an ASUS VivoTAB Note 8, a Lenovo Miix2, and on a homebuilt PC. I have upgraded and loaded from scratch. While I had some problems in the early builds, I had excellent driver support and I never got a BSOD. I have tested 32 bit and 64 bit, Home, Pro, and Enterprise. I began using Windows 10 as my daily driver running as a virtual PC on Windows 8.1 Hyper-V several builds before Build 10240 and had only a few issues, mostly related to virtual issues.

I would never recommend that regular Windows users be early adopters, because sometimes it requires knowledge and skills than most users may not have. But, this is, by far, the best version of Windows I have used and does a great job as a tablet or a desktop.

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your problem was almost surely due to upgrading before you were notified by Msoft that your machine was ready. That will not happen “as soon as it arrives.” You should have updated Windows and the applied for an upgrade. When all of your drivers etc are available, you will get a notification from M’soft and you are good to go.

No. As soon as I got the machine and turned it on I was invited to upgrade. And I did. It was what I expected. I bought the laptop after Win 10 was announced.

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I have had exactly the same problems with Windows 10. But my machine is a custom built desktop PC… ao it’s not someting limited to just a few types of machine. I also experienced at least 2 other serious problems:
1 I received a BSOD – with error message “CRITICAL PROCESS DIED” – on boot-up. This prevented me from even accessing Windows… thank heavens for a current back-up.
2. No matter what I tried I could NOT get drag and drop to work.
Methinks there are still too many bugs yet to be sorted out – so I have also rolled back to Windows 7 (which still works just fine).
I will be sitting on my hands – and using Windows 7 – for at least the next 9 months!

W10 installed without a hitch on 2 laptops and 2 desktops, including one custom built. But on the other custom built desktop (all on W7), but on the other custom desktop, it kept failing. I tried all the suggestions: unplug all USB devices other than keyboard and mouse (and changed to wired keyboard and mouse), remove video driver, disable antivirus, unplug all other internal hard drives. Nothing worked, and the last try fried the boot sector on my SSD. When I get it back up and running, I am going to hide the W10 update and remain content with W7 (home premium) because it did the job and I should have been happy with it instead of trying to get the next thing.

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Thirty-day Win10 experiment lasts only a week

By Lincoln Spector Using savvy security software is an important part of staying safe online. But just how effective is it? You can’t depend on your experience — or mine. It was intended as a month-long immersion in Windows 10 and a test of using the new OS on a hybrid laptop. But the experiment ended after just seven days. It turned out that upgrading a hybrid laptop/tablet was a trial of BSoDs and compatibility issues.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/thirty-day-win10-experiment-lasts-only-a-week/ (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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This excellent report on Windows 10 is why I subscribe to Windows Secrets. Early trouble reports can be a huge time-saver, inasmuch as Microsoft eventually gets around to fixing most of the bug major reports.

Just imagine, Lincoln, the number of people you helped avoid an uninstallation / retrograde out of Windows 10 ![/SIZE]

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This excellent report on Windows 10 is why I subscribe to Windows Secrets. Early trouble reports can be a huge time-saver, inasmuch as Microsoft eventually gets around to fixing most of the bug major reports.

Just imagine, Lincoln, the number of people you helped avoid an uninstallation / retrograde out of Windows 10 ![/SIZE]

Well said! I am one of them. I have the exact ASUS T100 hybrid laptop/tablet mentioned in the article and had been holding off on installing Windows 10 out of fear of just these sorts of problems. Because I am living in Mexico at the moment (where new computers are pricier AND tech. support can be difficult to find), and because this is my ONLY system, I can’t afford for it to go belly-up. And I don’t want to deal with multiple issues without a backup computer I can switch to if needed — even just to browse the web for solutions to issues I might experience. I also heavily use an e-reader app called Blio, which, while not reported on here, I worry would not play well with Windows 10 based on Lincoln’s experience with the e-reader apps he uses.

Windows 10 is just not worth the risk to me yet. I will wait until I am back stateside to attempt this upgrade — or I may just stick with 8.1, which I don’t find that annoying now that I’ve gotten used to it.

Thanks so much, Lincoln, for saving me potentially a heap of trouble!

Emily

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I will likely never get past Win7 and see this myself, but I love it…

—
FFoD
Friendly Face of Death
Windows 10 version of BSoD dubbed the Friendly Face of Death. -Lincoln Spector
—

submitted to http://www.acronymfinder.com/ and http://acronymsandslang.com/

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Nice article but…. JARGON!
Down below you define BSoD. The proper style is “…Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)….” I am just somewhat geeky.
Second, what is a “hybrid?”
Thirdly, its a bit wordy.

But overall, it’s very good, and much appreciated, which is the whole point, of course.

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Another ASUS T100 Windows 10 upgrade success story. Did not have to update any drivers prior to doing the upgrade, and the little hybrid now runs better than ever. I did have to uninstall some apps and move files elsewhere in order to make room for the upgrade (probably something I should have done anyway). Prior to that, I did not even get the “invitation” to get Windows 10. As soon as space was available, I ran Windows Update and there was the invitation waiting for me the next time I booted the computer. Within 24 hours, Windows 10 was ready to install, and it went smoothly. I believe that installation was under an hour. All’s well that ends well.

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As many have learned, if you wait for an invite from M’soft instead of just “forcing” an upgrade, the transition is almost always without problems. M’soft also tells you i advance, what will NOT function after the upgrade (usually older software).
Just go to the menu (little bars) at the upper left after you click on the Windows upgrade logo in your task bar. What?? no logo, then you will never be notified. If you install windows 10 without an invite notification, it is on YOUR head. I have now upgraded 3 Celeron old Windows 7 , cheap laptops and one two year old W8 touchscreen i3 and have had zero problems and improved performance (not sure why the performance improved). I am still awaiting an invite notification for my desktop which has a bunch of extras (peripherals and offbeat software). Patience in this case, as in most, is a virtue.

	TOP STORY Thirty-day Win10 experiment lasts only a week
	By Lincoln Spector Using savvy security software is an important part of staying safe online. But just how effective is it? You can’t depend on your experience — or mine. It was intended as a month-long immersion in Windows 10 and a test of using the new OS on a hybrid laptop. But the experiment ended after just seven days. It turned out that upgrading a hybrid laptop/tablet was a trial of BSoDs and compatibility issues.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/thirty-day-win10-experiment-lasts-only-a-week/ (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Regarding forced installs, I have upgraded my 20th computer yesterday. Ten of them were forced updates without any problems. Nine were displaying invites, but I upgraded from files on my flash drive. They went perfectly as well. One computer, the owner waited for the downloads after the invite, ran the update and had a problem afterwards. It wasn’t so much a Microsoft problem as it was a program that didn’t handle the upgrade well. (See above post) I shut it down, uninstalled it and re-installed. All is working now.

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I think you got a lemon. I upgraded my tablet the day Win 10 came out for release. I have not had one BSOD at all.

	TOP STORY Thirty-day Win10 experiment lasts only a week
	By Lincoln Spector Using savvy security software is an important part of staying safe online. But just how effective is it? You can’t depend on your experience — or mine. It was intended as a month-long immersion in Windows 10 and a test of using the new OS on a hybrid laptop. But the experiment ended after just seven days. It turned out that upgrading a hybrid laptop/tablet was a trial of BSoDs and compatibility issues.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/thirty-day-win10-experiment-lasts-only-a-week/ (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Giving up after a week is surprising, especially for someone who makes his living off of reviewing computer applications and problems. Problems with a new OS would be inevitable, especially issues with drivers. There’s only so much that MS can foresee with the multitudes of different hardware setups in the world. Surprised that Lincoln just gave up and didn’t spend more time documenting what it took to get his system running acceptably.

In my own experience, I upgraded 5 laptops and 1 desktop for myself and my kids from Win7 and Win8.1 to Win10. The two Win8.1 laptops (Toshiba) upgraded fine — no problems. The desktop is an old HP XW4200 that originally had XP on it. Upgraded to Win8 when MS had the $40 deal a few years ago. The upgrade to Win10 went well, 1 to 1.5 hours each. Those three have been running well (and as expected) for a few weeks.

Three laptops (Toshiba, Lenovo, HP) were Win7. Had problems with each of them which necessitated a clean install (which I was planning to do anyway). One went into a dreaded boot-loop; the other two just ran really slow. Upgrade from Win7 was painful and took about 2 hours. Since the clean install (which took less than 1 hour), they have been running great, as fast as when new (or better since the crap-ware is gone). Personally, I’m happy with how things went — no complaints.

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I am only guessing that you are in the minority; from all the comments. I, too, upgraded to W10 and am experiencing multitude of problems similar to many reported here.

Consider yourself very LUCKY-

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I’m on my second week with Win10 – the upgrade went well on an HP Pavilion running Win 7 Pro, 64bit, 1TB hard drive with 8GB ram. But the problems started soon after. Windows event viewer shows tons of errors, some critical and random reboots during the night. I’ve twice had the machine wake up about a tenth of the way, moving at glacial speed to open ANY window of any kind including system windows. I’ve had to shut down and that process, as noted, can take forever. So two other times, I’ve just powered down, and the machine doesn’t like that, but when it comes back up it is fine. I decided to rollback to Win 7 for a while anyway, but since I had created an admin account, unlocked the hidden one Fred described, I can’t rollback until I get rid of that account, and I can’t get rid of it because it is a system level admin account. Rock and hard place. I’ll call Microsoft for help this weekend when I have several hours to wait on the phone queue. Sigh. I truly don’t believe this OS was ready for prime time.
Thirty-day Win10 experiment lasts only a week
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By Lincoln Spector Using savvy security software is an important part of staying safe online. But just how effective is it? You can’t depend on your experience — or mine. It was intended as a month-long immersion in Windows 10 and a test of using the new OS on a hybrid laptop. But the experiment ended after just seven days. It turned out that upgrading a hybrid laptop/tablet was a trial of BSoDs and compatibility issues.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/thirty-day-win10-experiment-lasts-only-a-week/ (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Microsoft is hell-bent of getting everyone onto Windows 10, its Bing promotional vehicle, so it can overtake Google in the search world. Never mind the collateral damage caused by Microsoft’s chronic understatement of hardware requirements for any of its newly announced Windows operating system. Remember the 128MB memory requirement for Windows XP? Ever try to be productive with XP and only 128MB? Ever watch paint dry? By offering a free upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft absolves itself of any liability for problems encountered by people who try it. I’ll state once again MY PERSONAL requirements for running Windows 10. For desktops, 8GB memory and an i-series or quad processor. For laptops, 4GB (8GB preferred) and a dual processor or better. In either case, be very skeptical that Win 10 will run on a system that did not originally have a genuine Microsoft Win 7 or later sticker. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know somebody somewhere is ecstatic with Win 10 on a 1GB system with Atom CPU. And I’ll wait a few more months before making my 8GB Thinkpad X240 a Windows 10 guinea pig. Despite the millions of previous beta testers, Windows 10 remains Windows 8.2 BETA.

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As I have posted up here yesterday (tag Black2, dual drive, Western Digital), I ran into fatal issues with Win10 and an Asus product as well, though my conversion to Win10 never even got to a boot. Now I am wondering, what if Win10 had not excrunged my mbr, and it had gotten to a desktop, what OTHER issues would I have had to deal with. When someone talks about living on the bleeding edge, if they are doing an upgrade or install of an MS “point oh” product, it will likely be THEIR blood on that edge…

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Hey Lincoln, sorry you had so many problems. Some of the questions and observations of other posters are good points to consider in your situation – I’ve updated 3 computers – two of which are older HP machines, one running Win 7 (about 8 yrs old), the other 8.1(about 4 yrs old) and an ASUS laptop(about 3 years old). All were successful. I’m suggesting that people not be afraid of the upgrade – make an image of your machine, install the upgrade, test your programs and move on (basically). The big red flag I warn about is all the ‘report back to Microsoft’ crap that is easily missed during installation and further buried in settings. Users need to carefully ‘scrub’ their machine unless they’re ‘married’ to Microsoft…

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Heck I’d just be happy to be able to upgrade to Win 10 at all. I have 2 Core2Duo Win 7 machines that Win 10 says can’t be upgraded because the CPU does not support NX, which of course it does (and yes it is enabled, the machines test out to meet all requirements and should be upgradable). And I can’t seem to get any help from MS, which I do understand as they are handling a lot of upgrade issues right now. But it does seem as if there is more wrong with 10 than one would/should expect from a commercial release of a product. I’ve been in the Preview program most of this year and I am running Win 10 currently on a VM. I had planned to start migrating all my machines to Win 10, but my first attempt was with these Core2Duo machines, and that put a full stop to all my plans with Win 10. Until I can get those machines upgraded and tested with Win 10, I am not risking anything else. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.

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I have upgraded about 20 machines so far. Only one had a problem, a piece of security software that whitelists all programs and then monitors all programs that want to execute comparing to whitelist. It wanted to confirm the running of every program in Win 10. I shut down that software and uninstalled/reinstalled it. Incidentally, it was the only machine that I installed from invited download, the rest of them installed from a USB drive that I downloaded the files on, as it seemed to go faster. I personally own a Asus tablet (T700). It died after about a year and half after I bought it. I was never satisfied with it, it wouldn’t even run Android properly, so it doesn’t surprise me that there are problems putting Win 10 on one of those. I did purchase a Teclast X98 Air 3g (for hundreds less than I paid for the Asus) which dual boots Win 8.1 and Android. It has a better display, better connections (micro USB that runs keyboards/mice, and any USB drives that I have tried). The Android and Windows have been running very well on it. I decided that I really wanted to get rid of Win 8.1 (although I was managing OK), so when Win 10 was ready, I thought why not? I used my USB flash drive with Win 10 files on it. The upgrade went as smooth a butter and I am really happy with it. It’s been a month and half with no crashes, no hiccups. The only thing that I didn’t like was the Tablet mode which I turned off, I was used to using normal interface on Win 8.1, so continue using my tablet that way. I have installed Office 2007 and various utilities and Bitdefender without any problems. The only program that I have had a problem with is Microsoft Streets and Maps, I haven’t been able to get built-in GPS to work.
Over all I have been very happy with my Win 10 experience and will continue upgrading my customer machines. I generally find a bit better speed. Core Duos, dual cores and quad cores from both Intel and AMD all have worked fine.

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Heck I’d just be happy to be able to upgrade to Win 10 at all. I have 2 Core2Duo Win 7 machines that Win 10 says can’t be upgraded because the CPU does not support NX, which of course it does (and yes it is enabled, the machines test out to meet all requirements and should be upgradable).

It’s quite possible that it’s the motherboard chipset that doesn’t support NX.

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It’s quite possible that it’s the motherboard chipset that doesn’t support NX.

I thought I was pretty clear, “‘does not support NX’, which of course it does (and yes it is enabled, the machines test out to meet all requirements and should be upgradable).” So obviously yes, the chipset does support NX/XD, and yes it is enabled in the bios. And yes I did confirm this with MS’s coreinfo app. It appears as if Win 10 will let me try to do a clean install (haven’t actually tried that as I do not wish to have to reinstall everything, especially if it doesn’t even know if it works or not). In fact I do have the iso on dvd and when I first tried to upgrade with it, it ran normally let me choose upgrade and then told me the machine did not support NX/XD. But now when I try to upgrade with that DVD, it no longer even offers me an upgrade option, it goes straight to a clean install (even when launched from within Win 7) and requires a key to even try an install (DVD did not work this way at first, so obviously it wrote something to my HD the first time I tried to do the upgrade with the DVD). When I tried to upgrade using the win 10 upgrade icon in the systray, it failed telling me the computer did not meet cpu requirements, which it does. So no matter how I try to upgrade, I’m screwed. But as I say it does meet the cpu requirements including for NX, PAE and SSE2.

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Not a happy customer. Thanks for somewhere to vent.

Upgrading my Lenovo 16-Gb RAM Laptop to Win10.

System came w/ Windows 8.0. I installed all updates so the Microsoft Store would permit the free upgrade to Win 8.1. This puked after a few days, so I reinstalled. 8.0, all updates and then 8.1. THAT puked. I obtained an 8.1 ISO and installed to a clean HDD. That went well.

Signed up for a Win10 delivery slot. Launched upgrade when offered. The 2.99GB Download went well. Install went well. A couple of restarts and it was up.

Was not able to save from Word 2007 to my own folder. Had to create a new user then delete old user to be able to save to UsersmeDocuments. Oops, that cost me all of my bookmarks and Office settings.

Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking loaded, but did not function. Uninstalled / reinstalled no joy. Communicated w/Nuance, got an international Tech support call. Patient and competent guy in Manila, spoke English like it was his native language with a slight regional accent. After 1.75 hours and one more uninstall/reinstall + scrubbing software it was working, but again all user files are gone.

The tree below userspublic did not permit browsing under Windows Explorer till I set sharing. A first for me in upgrade-land.

In a Command Prompt window as Administrator, I cannot delete found.001 folders. I can move the folders and rename ’em but I can’t delete ’em.

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[I’m on my second week with Win10 – the upgrade went well on an HP Pavilion running Win 7 Pro, 64bit, 1TB hard drive with 8GB ram. But the problems started soon after. Windows event viewer shows tons of errors, some critical and random reboots during the night. I’ve twice had the machine wake up about a tenth of the way, moving at glacial speed to open ANY window of any kind including system windows.]

This is exactly why forced updates is a bad bad idea- for people that leave their computers on, a bad update could cause and endless reboot scenario where the computer is going nuts trying to install the bad update- for hours on end

Been running windows 7 for several years now and have never ocne had a blue screen of death- on windows 97 it happened all the time- 98 was a little better, xp was really good, and windows 7 so far has never BSoD’d on me- I think I’ll stick with 7 as I’m not keen on going back to constant BSoDs and troubles with drivers etc- another thing windows 7 got right- I thought BSods were basically a thing of the past- I guess Microsoft was feeling nostalgic or something- so they brought them back

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I’m on my second week with Win10 – the upgrade went well on an HP Pavilion running Win 7 Pro, 64bit, 1TB hard drive with 8GB ram. But the problems started soon after. Windows event viewer shows tons of errors, some critical and random reboots during the night. I’ve twice had the machine wake up about a tenth of the way, moving at glacial speed to open ANY window of any kind including system windows. I’ve had to shut down and that process, as noted, can take forever. So two other times, I’ve just powered down, and the machine doesn’t like that, but when it comes back up it is fine. I decided to rollback to Win 7 for a while anyway, but since I had created an admin account, unlocked the hidden one Fred described, I can’t rollback until I get rid of that account, and I can’t get rid of it because it is a system level admin account. Rock and hard place. I’ll call Microsoft for help this weekend when I have several hours to wait on the phone queue. Sigh. I truly don’t believe this OS was ready for prime time.

Just an update – I solved my own problem but it took drastic measures to do it. I first tried reinstalling via the upgrade route which did not help. But I also burned and .iso disk 64bit version and then did a completely new clean installation and all went perfectly. Got rid of the corrupted file problem, system integrity is perfect. Reinstalling everything is a pain but I’ve done it so many times it doesn’t seem quite as much a chore. Apart from that though all went well, though I never did figure out how to change the location in the Start menu weather app – it insisted on showing me Washington, D.C. for some reason, so I dumped it as I have a better one on my browser anyway. I’ve not time to read through all 56 pages here but am surmising others commiserate. I hope you have gotten your issues resolved! :^)

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Thirty-day Win10 experiment lasts only a week

I have access to a T100 but have not tried to update it (company-owned). However, I do have a personal Nextbook Flexx 11 (which comes from Walmart at $247) and the upgrade to Windows 10 went flawlessly. I did it from the Upgrade Notice, and not the Microsoft downloadable files. As others mention – that does seem to make a difference in “ease of install”.

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I have been using Calibre to read epub book since Windows 7. It works fine on Windows 10. Kindle works fine but cannot read epub.

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It appears that Lincoln’s Win10 upgrade on his ASUS netbook was the fault of not-quite-ready ASUS drivers, not Win10 itself. More attention should have been given in his Windows-bashing article to the 75 million successful Win10 upgrades than to just 1 under-powered netbook that failed. Or perhaps change the name of the newsletter to “Windows Bashing.”

I maintain a small computer lab (6 HP All-In-One PCs) and my wife and I have Toshiba L15W and ASUS Q200 12″ notebooks. The Win10 upgrades went just fine on all machines except for one of the HPs. Kids come in during summer and after school to download games and other stuff on these HPs, so I’ve had to delete lots of questionable downloaded software and twice re-install Win7 on them. The Win10 update failed several times on the problem PC, and when it finally succeeded (sort-of), the temp folders for each user were corrupted meaning that programs that write info to those folders couldn’t start up. I plan to re-install Win7 on it to have a clean OS, then let the Win10 upgrade run. I fully expect it to be fine, because the other 5 HPs upgraded flawlessly.

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Your comment about driver problems was right on. As of Aug/27/2015 when I attempt to update my Microsoft SurfacePro (the first SurfacPro), I receive “We’re validating Windows 10 for your PC”. In other words, MS doesn’t have a working version of WIN10 for their own computer. Upon checking for more information, MS blamed Intel for not having the drivers ready. The current updated message no longer mentions Intel, so I suspect that Intel now has the drivers ready. I am not sure how long that I will have to wait before MS incorporates these updated drivers into WIN10. Incidentally, this SurfacePro computer uses an Intel i5-3317U. I had no problems updating a Lenovo IdeaPad U530 running 8.1, or an ancient Gateway DX4850 running WIN7.

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I did the upgrade on a recently produced HP Stream 11 X360, which is also a rather low-end laptop/tablet hybrid. It has gone well. The only significant problem I am experiencing is that a restart causes my configuration for the Synaptics pointing device to be lost. (Most of the reboots so far were caused by Microsoft Update, as I hibernate or sleep when not using it.)

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I started a thread in mid-July about the idea of getting a Win10 hybrid as a laptop/desktop replacment.
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//170031-New-computer-for-Windows-10-Hybrid

The Surface Pro 3 I got came with Win8.1 and I immediately did a clean upgrade which went flawlessly. I’m slowly experimenting around with Win10 and since I never spent any time with Win8 or the tech preview, much of what I am seeing is new.

So far, I haven’t had any real problems other than the fact that the Universal/Modern/Metro (whatever) apps are a bit underwhelming. Not sure what I was expecting so maybe it’s my expectations that need adjusting.

It’s highly probable that if I were to upgrade my Win7 laptop, I would have a lot more issues, but that would be a rather pointless thing to do. In Lincoln’s case, he upgraded an established Win8 computer which one would think would have fewer issues.

Browsers would seem to me to be one of the areas that might be quite prone to problems because a lot of people use a lot of add-ins and extensions. And given the nature of some of the changes made in Win10, I suspect that this is an area where there would be conflicts.

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I do appreciate early adopters and I used to be one myself, jumping at every new thing. But I don’t have that kind of time to waste anymore. I’m glad others are taking my place at the front of the line.

When XP came out all of my personal and business systems had the random OSes that they came with, all my software was at different levels, etc., and it was misery. I waited (impatiently) for a year, then upgraded everything to XP-Pro and sync’d up all my software. It went smooth as clockwork, almost no problems arose, and the systems were stable and worked well for the most part until they were cycled out and destroyed. When Vista came out I waited a year and then decided to skip over it. Good decision. When Win7 came out I waited a year, then upgraded everything to Win7-Pro. This went even better than with XP. When Win8 came out I waited a year and decided to skip it. Now Win10 is out and guess what I’m doing?

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Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln … what were you thinking when you decided to test run the T100 tablet, a machine that is barely usable in Windows 8.1, in Windows 10? At the very least, you should have tested with a more substantial machine. The T100 was bound to fail.

I do not have a tablet, but I do have a Dell Venue 8 Pro Windows tablet, which I did successfully update from 8.1 to 10. The update was not an easy process and not for the faint-hearted as the SSD is only 64 GB and it had 51 GB filled when I started the process, but when I finished, it worked better than it did in 8.1

Regarding browsers … when Internet Explorer started giving me problems in Windows 8 and 8.1, I decided to switch to something else. I tested Chrome and had severe problems with it. I tested Firefox and hated it. So I finally tried a Chrome derivative called Slim-Browser and it did not have the same problems as Chrome, itself. It seemed more stable, but more importantly, it didn’t redirect me to advertisements of malware, like Chrome frequently did. (With Chrome, I thought I had some type of Malware on the computer, but no anti-virus software, no anti-malware software, no rootkit software, nothing could find a malware source — I tried literally a dozen or so to find the source of the problem, but nothing worked). So I now use Slim-Browser.

Regarding Microsoft’s Edge browser, it looks good, but it lacks extensions I need (like Last Pass), so, at least until MS updates Edge to accept extensions, i shall continue to use Slim-Browser.

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Misery loves company. Glad my problems are not unique. Disappointed that Edge does not handle Ancestry.com and directs user to Chrome or Firefox. Any word when Edge and Ancestry.com will work together?

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I, too, would be happy if I could install and run Windows 10.

After trying to perform an upgrade (to activate my machine), the install failed miserably, After disabling non-Microsoft startups, I was finally able to perform an upgrade and activate, only to be followed by my laptop overheating and shutting down. The Overheating problem continued on reboots and restarts.

After that, I performed a clean installation. Still plagued by constant overheating. Searching the web shows that this is a common problem with many laptops. Windows 10 is not laptop friendly, at all, among many different hardware vendors and hardware configurations.

At least I had a good system image prior to installing Windows 10, because Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu run perfectly on the same machine. Windows 10 is an enormous fail. It just doesn’t work out-of-the-box.

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Aye, there are a few including one or two old quad cores/boards I think.

My upgrade ruined a Win 8 VM…well the OS seemed ok but many programs wouldn’t work and Stardock suite programs are still mostly incompatible…so I’ve been waiting for the update upgrade path to kick in instead forcing it with an ISO…still waiting.

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I think Lincoln Spector’s remarks are very useful to many.
Very quickly, purely as a balance, I include my own experience; which is regretfully rather boring.
I use a Surface Pro 3 that one might say is “made for the job” – of handling Windows 8.1 (which it came with) and upgrading to Windows 10.
Downloading and installing Windows 10 was probably almost a dream. It took several hours, but seemed fine on the whole. My daughter has done the same on one of my older machines, an ASUS W6fP (ca 2008), and I have heard nothing much from her, which sounds promising. A friend of mine also has done it on an older machine, probably dated around 2007. He also seems OK by it.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I do have one ongoing problem however: Windows 10 INSISTED on downloading my whole OneDrive, 10s of thousands of files! There was simply NO way to stop it. Extraordinary.
The actual reason I liked OneDrive so much (as part of Office 365) is because of the virtually unlimited cloud storage. Thus downloading the whole [approx] 50gb was a real irritation. Fortunately my Surface had room: what would have happened otherwise?
Currently I am in an ongoing conversation with Microsoft as to why it happened, and how to return all those files to their comfortable spot ‘up in the clouds’ where I was quite happy for them to repose (apart from a dozen of so.)
But Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 do have a differing relationship with OneDrive, which I have yet to understand. I do believe that differing relationship stretches to one or two other Microsoft programs..
Strange, huh?
UPDATE 2015-09-04
I have now found that all my OneDrive stuff is actually in OneDrive online, so that’s alright.
But my complaint now, is that whereas OneDrive/Desktop and OneDrive/online were SO compatible in Windows 8.1, they are not very compatible in Win 10! Which hardly makes sense.
1) In 8.1, all your OneDrive files were visible on the desktop and the cloud: Whether they were available was entirely your choice.
2) In 10, ALL your OneDrive files are only visible in the cloud: They are only visible on the desktop if you actually sync that particular folder. ALL files that you do not sync, while being safe in the cloud, are NOT visible to the desktop. Very irritating and definitely a backward step that I simply cannot understand!
3) Whereas one could make single files ‘available’ (for editing) on the desktop in 8.1, this is NOT so in 10: Only complete folders can now be made available in 10. A REAL backward step!!
However there are ways to handle OneDrive in 10, both desktop and online, that one discovers as one moves along, but it just needs quite a bit of unnecessary work.
I would love it if Microsoft would tell us why they made those changes to what seemed to me, to be an almost perfect situation. Was it a programming necessity, or some nitwit who never used it anyway?

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I tried Windows 10 on my desktop and on my Surface Pro 3. I took it off the desktop almost immediately as I encountered numerous problems with my 16gb i7 desktop. (Example – it wouldn’t recognize or accept my 3rd monitor].

Fine, I thought, should work well on my SP3 tablet as it’s made by Microsoft and having a digital assistant like Cortana should be a boon for a tablet. Wrong on all counts:

1 – Cortana does her searches on the web first. Pretty brain-dead if you’re looking for something on your local system. You sometimes end up wading through the pages of web searches before finally getting to your local apps/files.

2 – Once again, problems… like autohide kept coming back, despite numerous times unchecking it in taskbar properties. Autohide is particularly annoying on a tablet because it’s not easy to get the taskbar to appear when using your finger or the stylus.

3 – Win8.1 is much better on a tablet. Win10 returns the user to the Win7 interface while trying to compromise with the new Win8 interface. As an example, with Win8.1, I can switch from desktop to Metro with a single swipe of my finger from the left side of my tablet. Searches are simpler too when looking for something on your local system. Having bothered to learn Win8.1’s interface, I find it faster and easier than Win7 (or Win10 for that matter).

4 – Forced updates?!!! When historically MS has caused re-installs with some of their updates!!! Never! I always have waited a few weeks before installing updates – only when I knew they were safe. This one facet right here would have been a deal-breaker, even if I didn’t have the other problems.

Some users never accepted the new interface with Win8.1. They downloaded Start Menu 3rd party apps, etc. Had they bothered to learn the new interface, they would have discovered a good way of doing things (for a tablet – a little more difficult on a desktop, but not much). This reminds me of all the crying I observed when MS introduced the ribbon interface (BTW a much better system than the old menu). I personally do not want to go back to the Win7 way of doing things. So I ended up taking Win10 off my tablet and I don’t anticipate going back neither (unless they return some of the speedy Win8.1 way of doing things to the OS).

I guess my final opinion would be, if you still love Win7 and never bothered to give Win8.1 a real effort, then go for Win10. You’ll be in mostly familiar territory. On the other hand, if you spent the time, and learned Win8.1’s interface properly, you’ll feel like you’re taking a step backwards in “upgrading” to Win10.

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Again, thanks for a place to vent.
Installing Win10 on my Intel DX38BT Motherboard w/Core2-Quad CPU, 8GB DDR3 RAM with (3) nVidia 7300 Video cards, (6) Dell 2001 monitors @ 1600×1200 each

Runs GREAT with WinXP-Pro-32-SP3, plus 150+ patch/updates
Runs OK with Win7-Pro-32-SP1, plus 150+ patch/updates
Runs POOR with Win7-Pro-64-SP1, plus 150+ patch/updates
Runs GREAT with Win8.1-Pro-64, plus 120+ patch/updates
Or rather it did, till an update failed and crashed the system hard. This happened sometime after the July 25th release of Win10.

Windows 8.1 on DX38BT
Installed 8.1-Pro-64 from ISO/DVD. With the first 120 or so patch/updates, the SYSTEM WAS VERY HAPPY. Win8.1 recognized all 3 of my video cards by name. With patch/updates came video card drivers. On reboot-after update, all screens came up live. Amazed I was.

THEN came the 8.1 patch/update after Win10 was released. This hard-crashed my system. I was only able to “revert to a prior” condition. This is the reset-level that preserves my data but zaps all my apps. It would boot, but that appears to be at the level of fresh install with Windows. The reverted 8.1 recognized the nVidia cards by name, but had no drivers.

Only the main video card works, lighting up 2 monitors in projector/mirror mode. Resolution only goes to 1280×1024 Desktop is not “extended” to both monitors. All six monitors like to run 1600×1200. The other two cards / 4 monitors are dark/blank.

Zapped the reverted Win8.1 Pro HDD. Reinstalled Win8.1 from ISO/DVD. That went OK. All 3 Video cards were again identified by name but no drivers were loaded.

Ran Windows Update which reported I’d be downloading 2.99 GB worth of patches. I should have worried but with 100+ patches to Win 8.1 I didn’t catch it. It was Windows 10 with all it’s issues. Windows Update on my healthy 8.1 fresh install would only load Win10. I tried to schedule the upgrade for a few days later. That was ignored and on reboot, Win10 was loaded. After upgrade to Win10, the 3 video cards were recognized as present, but not by name.

Windows 10 on DX38BT from DVD
Installed Win10 Pro-64 from ISO/DVD. The CD-Keys that I have for Win8.1 were rejected. Unlike the 8.1 install, there was a “Later” button for the CD Key, so I continued. Install was long but smooth, till the screens came up. Device Manager knows that there are 3 video cards but does NOT even recognize their name as 8.1 had.

Windows Update is no longer an item in Control Panel. It lives elsewhere.

The 3 most recent nVidia driver sets all fail, politely telling me it didn’t work out. Email today from nVidia says my expensive video cards are not compatible with Windows 10. Happiness and joy. Not.

I am unwilling to buy a new motherboard, CPU and 3 video cards at this time in order to run Win10.

Where do I go for the individual patches for Win8.1?

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Lincoln, I have an ASUS t100ta with 64GB storage which seems to be the same model as yours. One difference. I found out that my motherboard was defective (the on/off and volume buttons were not operating properly) and I had ASUS replace the Main Board (thus ending my warranty options). I will not be upgrading my t100ta to Windows 10 anytime soon, based on your experiences with your t100. Thank you for reporting on this experience.

Also, thanks to all the Lounge members who are reporting on your own experiences upgrading the t100 tablets to Windows 10. Your input adds weight to Lincoln’s observations. Even those of you who did not experience such severe issues.

I hope in a few months most of you will try the upgrade again (perhaps once Threshold 2 is in place later this year). Then please report to us again. I would like to base my own decision on upgrading to Windows 10 on something more than ASUS and Microsoft saying that my tablet is ready for the upgrade.

Lincoln’s reporting on this experience and the Lounge feedback from other t100 users are well worth my entire Windows Secrets paid subscription.

-- rc primak

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At our American Legion Post, I had 2 Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit systems and just finished the Windows 10 update. The Adjutant Computer has not seen anything per say that is goofy, however, on the Finance computer, after the update, we were looking at the Accounting System today and suddenly realized that the lefthand side of the application was chopped off similar to what you described in the article. Both systems are Desktop with 17 inch flat screens, and we pushed the auto-reset on the monitor itself. that corrected not only that application but we no longer saw any issue from any application after that. Not sure why the darn system decided that it needed a reset of the monitor but it evidently did. Just thought I would toss that into the wind and see if flies or goes over the cliff.

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I am not a huge fan of Microsoft, by any means. But it seems to me worth mentioning that it has long been the case that there are no two Windows computers in the world that are exactly alike. That may be a slight exaggeration, but only slight.

In a case like this, where people are upgrading to an entirely new version of Window by the 100’s of 1000’s it is not surprising that problems are being reported. But, it seems quite remarkable that there are not more problems being reported.

And, from what I have been reading, it’s not so much that Windows itself is having problems, it’s 3rd party software that’s having problems. And it’s been the case for as long as I remember that any OS patch/update is apt to break some 3rd party software. And that particularly goes for drivers.

All of this is by way of suggesting that anyone with a Win7 or a well established Win8 computer should really seriously consider whether an upgrade to Win10 is in their best interests. Really, seriously think about it. I know that MS said the magic word and we all like something that is FREE, but seriously think about this and wait for a few months to find out if your software may have some problems.

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My experience has been mixed. On an older Sony laptop that even had trouble getting Windows 8 to run because of driver issues, I had zero problems getting the technical preview installed and it has been running fine ever since through updates and everything else.

On the desktop that I really want to be running Windows 10 on, it has been a nightmare. No invitation from Microsoft (despite the update checker saying there were no driver issues or incompatible programs), and I forced the update a couple of times and had horrible results with installed programs being left behind in Windows.old. I tried a clean installation which went ok, so I reinstalled all of my programs and got things up and running, only to be clobbered by the bad update that caused looping restarts, and issues with an nvidia display driver that I mistakenly installed from the nvidia site. The system remains unstable, updates hang on restart and after forced reboots may or may not have been correctly installed, and the system locks up predictably after running for a short period of time. SFC and DISM run and report errors that can’t be corrected. I have tried to repair the unstable system with upgrade installations of Windows but they ran but did not do anything, and yesterday I tried that again with the latest version (10532) from the tech preview, and it actually did run but left most of my programs, that had been installed correctly after the clean install, in windows.old again.

It would be great if there were some way to figure out what the issues are with the system, instead of being told that “We’re continually working with our partners to ensure that even more PCs work well with Windows 10”.

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The problem I experienced is that a Win7 workstation, 64-bit, did NOT reserve the upgrade, yet is being hit by attempts to install Win10. There have been 18 attempts over 13 days The GWX fix has been uninstalled and that seems to have stalled the unwanted attempts. The failure code is a generic error relating to Windows Update and the Microsoft web page offers no help. The Win10 install is NEVER listed in Windows Update, only the failed attempt message. The user under which the failures occur is a normal user (non-administrator), yet there is never a dialog to get administrator levels for the attempt.

I suspect that if the install succeeds, the result would be plagued with errors also.

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@ oldITguy

See: http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//171159-W7-Remove-W10-update-tray-icon-amp-Sort-updates-by

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Coochin: thanks for the reference. Many others also found.

Here is what I found…if Windows Update is set to automatic, then you will get an “automatic” download and install of Win10, even WITHOUT the reserve from GWX.

This can be fixed. I changed Windows Update from automatic to notify about updates. Then, I deleted the contents of the Windows download folder (lots of crap in there). Then I told WU to check for updates. When the download started for the multiple gig file, I then cancelled it. I also applied the changes to the registry DisableOSUpgrade (set to 1) and the other value AllowOSUpgrade was set to 0. Both of these keys are under WindowsUpdate keys in the registry.

Also, search the registry for ‘OSUpgrade’ to find out how deep this stuff is embedded (all pretty much undocumented as best I can determine, and most certainly not understandable by the average or even highly qualified user).

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Here is what I found…if Windows Update is set to automatic, then you will get an “automatic” download and install of Win10, even WITHOUT the reserve from GWX.

I’ve still not heard of a single instance of Windows 10 actually getting installed against a user’s wishes.

Lots of unwanted downloads, but I think there’s always an OK required before it takes over for an hour.

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Then, I deleted the contents of the Windows download folder (lots of crap in there).

I had not caught that that W10 ESD or what ever gets DLed to the “Windows download folder” which different for every user, must get complicated w/ different users always logging on!

:cheers:

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Bruce: I believe you are correct, and perhaps this is why the install attempt fails.

What I found was a very long Microsoft web site (64 pages long) that kept re-asserting the failed attempt was due to corruption in the file (therefore, the suggestion to clean out the Windows software download folder and start over).

However, I discovered another Microsoft web page that flatly denied the corruption issue and offered other alternatives (imagine that Microsoft contradicting themselves).

Nevertheless, someone from Microsoft is likely to find a way to get that “automatic” install to work (then things might go downhill fast).

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[QUOTE}Bruce: I believe you are correct, and perhaps this is why the install attempt fails.[/QUOTE]

As it did when Windows 8 was released for many.

I’ve had Windows 10 Pro on 5 different computers, three were PC’s & two notebooks, not counting the release before the final on another. Today, it’s only on one, a Toshiba with a 1st gen i3 370M & Intel HD graphics that’s used sparingly, and a Vmware Player VM inside of Linux Mint running the same OS. Surprisingly, the VM runs much better than any of the native installs did.

Compared to both Windows 7 & 8.1, it was taking at least 2x the time to run AV/AM scans on fast SSD’s, and SuperAntiSpyware scans that would complete in 17-22 seconds would take over a minute, on one machine, a clean install. Windows 10 seems to be the second coming of Vista, a resource hog designed to be ran on the newest hardware, such as MB’s that runs DDR4 RAM. And my main PC is no wimp, a Dell XPS 8700 with a i7-4770, 32GB RAM & a GTX 960 GPU.

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/Oa6G1egJmmUlqBt8TgVbtvL

My relatives & close friends always calls on me to fix their computer/networking issues, and all but one whom upgraded to Windows 10 has brought their computer back to me & asked to reinstall Windows 7 or 8.1, the same ones I’ve warned over & over again to create backup images monthly (at a minimum) & before any major changes. Had they heeded my advise, in 30 minutes, they’d be up & running again.

I believe once the initial excitement is over & the smoke clears, many will revert to whatever version of Windows they were running, or to a Linux OS, speaking of which, Linux Mint 17.1 is my daily OS. Less overhead, maintenance and breathes new life into low end Windows 7 computers that were churned out by the millions from various OEM’s. Windows 10 will never run on many of these machines w/out issues.

Just my personal opinion, Windows 7 was Microsoft pinnacle, since then, the corporation has been delivering crappy OS’s, though 8.1 runs good on many computers. Yet not enough to lure many away from the safe haven of Windows 7. To this very day, at Costco, Windows 7 Pro computers of all types are in high demand, and has been so since at least early 2013, there’s no sign the surge is slowing. Many envisioned what Windows 10 was going to be, as well as not wanting a Windows 8 or 8.1 computer & took action.

Do the same while you still can. The way the UEFI firmware is today, I’m not sure if one can take OEM Windows 7 media & COA & install it on a new computer shipped with Windows 10, even if drivers are available (the XPS 8700 has drivers for Windows 7 through 10). Not all OEM’s has this option, as some changes product lines every year. Dell will ride the XPS 8700 until they come up with a DDR4 compatible build to replace it, the PC has been a huge cash cow for the corporation for over 2 years.

It’s a bit early to deliver the final verdict, yet I believe Microsoft will fail in their goal to have the OS on the majority of the world’s computers. And if eventually so, by then it’ll be like XP, held together with spit & duct tape. Piling updates/upgrades on top of another, we’ve already seen the outcome of that & don’t need to go there again.

Cat

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The resource hog statement has been made about every OS Microsoft has released. You can go back to Win95 and find articles decrying the system resources required to run it. IMO, it has only been true for the initial release of Vista. That was cleared up quite a bit with SP1 and the big OEMs finally getting off their collective butts and releasing drivers. I have never expected a new OS to run the same as the prior OS on a PC more than one year old.

I have Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Enterprise and 2 Windows 10 Home machines. They are all of various vintages and specifications. ALL of them are running just fine with Win10. I do not want to go back to the prior OS on any. As with any new OS the user needs to be prepared to spend 2 – 4 weeks getting acclimated. People who upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and expect everything to be exactly the same are just fooling themselves.

BTW, there is no surge in Win7 sales. At best it would be holding steady in share of new PCs. That would be a decline from its peak because Win8/8.1 took away some of that. If it is holding steady it is only because Win10 machines have not yet filled the pipeline. If Microsoft sees the sales they want from Win10 machines you can be sure that retail Win7 Pro sales will cease in the near future. Retail sales of Win7 Home Basic, Home Premium, & Ultimate have already ceased.

Joe

--Joe

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Greetings … that’s a good title for this thread. I’m in a situation since three days that Windows Update continuously fails with “Error 0x8000ffff” and I’m frustrated as this is AN INFINITE LOOP I’m caught in. I did partake in the Windows Insider Preview and with some pain and effort finally got to build 10240 (Windows Pro). WU worked for me since last year. So why’s it failing stubbornly now? (Yes, I have made 3 reports in Windows Feedback under Windows Installation and Setup – Windows update.)

It may be due to my recent activity: I installed 8GadgetPack following a recommendation published in Germany’s leading computer magazine (c’t). I now have a clock displayed and the battery status that also conveniently shows the remaining time to run. Another tip led me to install the freeware O&O ShutUp10 (oo-software.com), an brilliantly thought-out way to block unwanted unsolicited communication back to Microsoft. I started with Version 1.0.1342, now upgraded to 1.0.1344. On sensing problems with WU, I reset all blocked settings to ‘factory-default’, i.e. as Microsoft had them initially. Keep in mind that it only switches settings that are in the API, i.e. any developper has access to these too.

Maybe these actions had nothing to do with the situation I’m in. Help in Internet only relates to Windows Vista and doesn’t apply to Windows 10 (the keys are nowhere in the registry): http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/windows-update-error-8000ffff

Is anybody else permanently stuck with the same Windows Update error 0x8000ffff ?

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I tried the same thing; things seemed much faster (not nearly as fast as XP though) and the graphics and explorer were acting well but she lost her load on the second program I tried installing from a network location. The new oops something went wrong, gathering information blue screen, took a good ten minutes to gather, reboo…and froze. Sure glad I didn’t invest much time or effort into W10, it’s been nothing but a train wreck so far.

Hard off, boot, second blue screen just going to network place. W10 gone now; rest in overwritten bits missy.

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Microsoft claims that Windows 10 is “the last version of Windows”. Too true! My last version was in August 2015 and there will never be another version, update or hotfix … because I’m caught in the rut that no one ever wants to land in: when Windows Update is rendered ***** and although it desperately tries every day to download and install the next updates, it fails with Error 0x8000ffff on each update hotfix as if this were an infinite loop. I’m not sure what caused it: yes, I did install the latest NVIDIA 355.82 driver with a download direct from NVIDIA when the friendly toast pop-up (err.. pop sideways) told me there’s a new driver available. This might have confused WU indefinitely … ad infinitum. I noticed that the last (ever) update proceeded unusually – it didn’t just restart my notebook, it restarted several times! That was probably a warning signal. OMG, what have I been through in the past 9 months with Windows 10 Insider Preview… months ago I thought I’d never recover when I needed about 16 restart attempts to get a newer Build installed – yet it came up, and I was positively impressed with the recoverability of Windows 10. This time I’m stumped. I don’t see a way to go back to a previous saved Windows state as Settings -> Recovery only suggests reinstalling Windows 10 with the choice of keeping my files or not. I’m saying to you – you don’t want (ever) to be caught in the rut I’ve landed in. Helpful suggestions welcome! (I may try contacting Microsoft Support, but I’d rather someone analyse what bit(s) in the Registry are blocking WU from working.)

UPDATE #1: Well, a keen and kind Microsoft Support technician is working on my notebook remotely since an hour or so. With reboots, retests, clean boot etc. This problem persists and he’s just as baffled as I am. The standard tools to “Fix Microsoft Update Service Issues” only cover Windows 8.1, 8, 7, Vista and XP. There is no tool for Windows 10 issues as yet! Next step: escalation to a level 2 service technician.

UPDATE #2: In the meantime I ran the dotnetfx_cleanup_tool: now all WU errors have flipped to Error 0x8024a206. (Previously I had also seen 0x80070643 and 0x8007007e.) 20 minutes past the appointed meeting time no one had contacted me… I called Microsoft Answer Desk and a kind person on the other end said he’d contact the supervisor of the level 2 technicians. That’s my karma for the meetings I turned up to late. Now it’s 65 minutes past the appointed time, and guess what … I’m going to bed. G’nite!

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