Versions of Windows 10

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An elderly friend of mine in Canada recently paid a guy who works in the IT department of a large insurance company $180 to update her Windows 7 computer to Windows 10.

She has asked for my help on a few occasions the last having to do with her Alexa Echo device.  That, like a number of other things hasn’t worked since the upgrade.  On taking remote access to her machine I find that among other things, Microsoft Store is not accessible where I would have found the Alexa app to install.

There are so many other things that I cannot see that I wonder whether the guy actually installed a workstation version of Windows 10 created especially for the insurance company.  That might explain why there are many things that would normally be accessible to the user are not present.  My background was in mainframe computers where the DDE operators would have only access to the one particular program necessary for their job.  I have been retired many years so I have no idea of how things work these days.  I would add that I use Windows 10 Pro so it is possible that with Windows 19 home these things are not available but I find that hard to believe.

Your advice would be much appreciated.

Derek Swift

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Per Microsoft:

Cortana has been updated and enhanced in the Windows 10 May 2020 Update. With these changes, some previously available consumer skills such as music, connected home, and other non-Microsoft skills are no longer available.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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It is possible the version installed is a tied down version used by the company.
Are you able to roll back to W7 – I think it’s 30 days post upgrade, assuming it was upgraded and not re-imaged.

cheers, Paul

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Ideally you would check the edition and version she is running with the Winver command.  Windows store not working is a common problem with other causes and fixes than being the wrong version install.  If normal Windows 10 Pro or Home has been paid for by the guy/technician, a clean install or many levels and types of repair install could be done now that the license is owned, of course setup of some software after that can be difficult.  You might also need to find again Dell (or your manufacturer) specific utilities if they are wanted.

Two pretty safe things that can fix Windows store being unavailable are to create a new user account, and see if it works in the new user account.  Alternative is go to “apps and features” by search,  click “microsoft store”, click “advanced options” then “reset”

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Paul T wrote:

It is possible the version installed is a tied down version used by the company.
Are you able to roll back to W7 – I think it’s 30 days post upgrade, assuming it was upgraded and not re-imaged.

cheers, Paul

only 10 days.

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Many thanks for the help and advice.  Unfortunately the thirty days has long since elapsed.

I am pretty sure that the guy never purchased any version of Windows to install as he took the computer with him back to his place of work, which is why I suspect that a”company” version was installed.  Is there any reason  I cannot install the official version of Windows over the existing one.  I am in the process of saving all her photos, music etc. to DVDs in case anything gets lost.  I have posted her an iso DVD of Windows 10 which hopefully in the due process of time and Canada post will arrive.

Again thanks to everybody for the help.

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anonymous wrote:

On taking remote access to her machine

Derek – A couple of questions to clarify:

Q1. What are you using for remote access to your friend’s machine (as this can effect how you view the remote machine yourself)?

Q2. You use Window 10 Pro yourself. How familiar are you? (So responses are tailored appropriately. For example, to check availability of the store, if one of us asked ‘please run this PowerShell command elevated’, would you know what to do or would step-by-step instructions be better?)

Q3. How familiar are you with this forum? (Again, so responses are tailored appropriately. For example, if one of asked ‘please post a screenshot’ would you know what to do?)

Hope this helps…

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