Win11 Home never completely lets go

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ISSUE 18.44 • 2021-11-15 LANGALIST By Fred Langa Even after upgrading to Pro, PCs that start with Windows Home can retain several critical Home limita
[See the full post at: Win11 Home never completely lets go]

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WSGeo, RedEye9, abbodi86, Tom-R, SupremeLaW, rc primak, lmacri

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Fred, having started with DOS 3.1 I only too well remember Gates law; every other version of windows is rubbish; 95 good, 98 bad, 98SE good, ME bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 10 good, so win11 should be bad. I think you may have just confirmed the continuing validity of the law.

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SupremeLaW

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I just wish MS would make new mistakes. Now, they’re mostly repeating or resurrecting old mistakes. There’s no excuse for that.

Clearly, Windows isn’t the focus it once was for Microsoft. It really feels like they handed this upgrade off to the Junior Varsity team. Sigh

 

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SupremeLaW, rc primak

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anonymous wrote:

95 good, 98 bad, 98SE good, ME bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 10 good,

You have a good view but you are missing the Vista

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

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RockE

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wavy wrote:

You have a good view but you are missing the Vista

Missing Windows 2000 Professional, as well.  I ran that for a couple or so years before XP, as I recall, which is also not in that lineup.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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wavy

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How could I forget 2K, I still have a laptop with it!

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

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I started using computers in June 1971.  Even back then, I remember a computer science PhD student’s observation that “operating systems” are THE most complicated things human beings have ever created.  1971!

Many years later, I succeeded in stabilizing Windows XP with much added third-party software.  A drive imaging program from PowerQuest made it relatively easy to “roll back” in the event of malware infection or any similar malfunction.

What I really do NOT understand is Microsoft’s major shift to mandatory OS upgrades.

I admit that the following suggestion has been met with mostly deaf ears.  Nevertheless, I still believe it’s worth repeating:

Microsoft should institute a MINIMUM of 12 months doing nothing but bug fixes, with a major focus on quality control.

Complexity “C”  ~=  (n^2 – n) / 2

Where,

“n” is the number of running OS processes

Because “C” is increasing exponentially, and because staff turnover inside MS is inevitable, the combination of inexperienced staff and EXPONENTIAL COMPLEXITY has predictable outcomes.

Our hats are off to Susan, Fred et al. for trying to tackle this BULL by the horns.

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wavy, Cybertooth

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Switching to Linux is starting to look more and more like a reasonable option.  I know that there are hiccups with Linux drivers also; but Fred’s nightmare experience here with a supposedly easy upgrade to Windows 11 is seriously nudging me in that direction.  At least with Linux I don’t need to worry about an Internet connection just to get the O/S installed.

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The last Home to Pro upgrade I did was in 2014, Windows 7 Home Premium (came installed on my Dell Inspiron 580) to Windows 7 Pro.  And it still lives on in the A side of my dual boot through various hardware and Windows upgrades: 7 Home Premium to 7 Pro to Windows 8 Pro to Windows 8.1 Pro to Windows 10 Pro v1507 and step-by-step to v21H1 to Windows 11 Pro on unsupported hardware, including throughout that time frame every Windows update/upgrade offered to my hardware with the exception of blocking drivers via Group Policy.

I practice a regimen of weekly drive imaging, which runs in the wee hours of Sunday morning. All I have to do after I get up Sunday morning and having my coffee is to plug into a drive dock on my NAS, one at a time, two HDD’s and copy the latest images for offline storage.  I have yet to find it necessary to do a clean install.

As for Windows 11 Pro, maybe it is half-baked, and I can’t give it a full review since I’m running it on unsupported hardware via a simple hack, but it has yet to give me any real problems.  The only unresolved minor issue is that the Settings > Security page is dead (which may very well be because of my unsupported hardware).  But I’ve deduced that Microsoft Defender and the Firewall are working just fine.  Services tells me they’re running, Task Scheduler tells me scans are being run.  I haven’t used the Defender UI in years, so I don’t really miss that part of it.

But I can’t give Windows 10 Pro a bad grade, either, since it’s been nothing but stable and reliable for me since I first began running it.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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While you were/are having issues with this upgrade from W11 Home to Pro, was there any contact with/from Microsoft concerning your issues?

This site, as far as I’m concerned, is a respected sounding board for computer related issues.  One would think that ‘someone’ reads these comments and problems and addresses them with what I will call ‘the upgrade group’.  From the article,, it seems that there was no person-to-person contact with anybody at Microsoft.   Surely you are not the only person/organization that is having this problem.  Maybe I’m not aware of all the communication channels available to/from Microsoft.

 

If the knowledgeable members of this staff is having problems, what is the common user doing with the problems.  Granted the common user isn’t trying to change from one version (Home) to another version (Pro).  They would probably call their geek friend and hand off the issue to them.  They would then proceed to tear their hair out trying to fix a potentially un-fixable problem.

 

my 2 cents worth…

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Cybertooth

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Fred,

I posted this link in the bluesnews forum and The Flying Penguin responded that an install could take place w/out a network connection. It was news to me too.

Microsoft doesn’t make it easy, but there is a secret key combo that fixes this: You press Alt+F4 when it asks you to connect to Wifi and that skips the Wifi setup and takes you to the local account setup. IF MS ever takes that secret key combo away, you can disable Wifi in BIOS (yeah, that’s a PITA) and make sure the LAN cable is unplugged. If the Win11 installer sees no available way to connect to the Internet, it assumes you’re doing a kiosk install and skips right to a local user account setup. This is in there because offline installation has to be supported for Enterprise users.

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Tom-R, carpintero, Cybertooth, AlexEiffel

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Documented here https://hothardware.com/news/bypass-windows-11-internet-setup-requirement-local-account

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Tom-R, Cybertooth

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Note to self, put that in the knowledge base section of the site.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Cybertooth

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My experience agrees.  Better off to install Pro, which will be a kludged version of Home with stuff grayed out until you input your Pro key, then it’s fine.

I tried the upgrade once and got so infuriated with that old laptop trying to install updates and OEM stuff from 5 years ago, I somehow broke off some of the HDD pins swapping it from here to there.  Oh well, the new SSD was vastly better.  Nothing valuable lost, Pro still works fine today.

We have two Enterprise licenses bought by mistake.  That’s the version you want if you can find it, updates can be stopped forever, just be careful doing that.

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OK – couldn’t actually read the article, but sounds like the Windows * driver acceptability criteria changes from June are standard in Windows 11 – so perhaps Windows 11 Setup ditches the drivers which are not suitably signed exposing the minimal state of support for older hardware on Windows 11? (couldn’t tell you, I won’t be getting it.). Of course if it IS Windows setup, chances are we might find out with Windows 10 21H2..

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-hardware-certification/changes-to-driver-signing-for-windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2/ba-p/2460039

I used PNPUTIL to scrape drivers from an OEM install so I could reinstate them having reinstalled the customer’s LSE product. I don’t suppose you could subvert the issue by exporting the driver set before upgrade, and pull them back later in the hope Windows would decide and driver was better than no driver? It’s a handy trick if you’re doing a lot of upgrades to machines of the same hardware configuration and find yourself in a driver hole with no time or Internet access for more sensible work arounds but machines in “before” and “after” upgrade condition…

 

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carpintero

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Just a reminder that for a mere $1 a year you could get the plus newsletter.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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forgot to add (having tied it on 21H1 to be sure) a quick driver backup:

md c:\drivers

pnputil /export-driver * c:\drivers

Theoretically restore ..

pnputil /add-driver c:\drivers\*.inf /subdirs /install /reboot

Should it all go belly up…

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There’s valuable info and hints here, but moreover it’s gratifying that other people have trouble with upgrades. Applause!

(yes, a little late catching up on my newsletters; mea culpa)

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