Windows 10 upgrade installing now .... I'm scared .....

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yep, I'm finally doing it, three years or so after release, upgrading to windows 10. I hope home edition is good enough, as the pro edition is $50 more. But I've made two different backups of my current windows 7 boot drive and another backup of all my e-mails just in case. All my photos, videos, music and stuff is on an external drive that also has two backups. I think I'm set.

I think...... goodbye windows 7 - you were a good friend 

[Art Blade]

I really liked the old system, too Only I had to upgrade for some games that required w10.

By the way, if you want to save serious money (about 50%) there is a legal but obviously not very advertised way: ask for a "system builder" version. Same OS you would have wanted, only the fancy colourful package is missing. Instead, you'll get a flat white cardboard pack. Although system builder versions are not meant for the average consumer, it is completely legal to buy those. All you need to do is ask for it. Some shops know there are some clever people so they even got it on their shelves or in storage. I've been using system builder versions for a long time now.

[LowPolyOWG]

Would that be the same as an OEM license?

[PZ]

just in case things go south, you can revert to your old windows version using the windows.old folder, which is automatically created when you install w10. It should contain everything from your old installation. It should be automatically deleted 10 days after you install w10, but you can manually delete it from the temp files area.

[Art Blade]

Would that be the same as an OEM license?

In a way yes, they're meant for individually built machines and the licence is limited to one machine. So in this case it's not what we typically understand when hearing, "OEM," because that would be buying a PC from Computer Shop XYZ and they'd slap every type of test versions and other *bleep* of software on it and the OS would be often kind of limited. I tend to tear that *bleep* from my computer and install a fresh OS. So this is more like being the Computer Shop yourself, building a custom machine. And end up using it for yourself..

[LowPolyOWG]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, this is what I feel like now:



Ok you can skip this, but here's the sequence of events:

Bought the new license online (no option to get the OEM version that way, and might not w0#k for an upgrade, not that it mattered, but hey) so with tax $150. Ouch but OK. Downloaded the installer and ran it, seems to go OK, gets to the friendly blue screen with a percentage counter. I read a magazine to pass the time. I look up a bit later and it's back at the win7 desktop. Hmmm I say.....

Try it again and after the 10 minute download (imagine what it would be on my old connection, which is one reason I've put off upgrading so long) it goes again, this time I watch it. It gets to 32% and goes away, no crash notice, no error message, the install app just goes away and I'm back at the desktop like nothing happened.

Oh boy.

Look on the web, and see some issues from 4 years ago about the install locking up at 32% but nothing about it crashing, so I look at the advice and follow the following suggestions. Remember each time I do one of these is a half hour or so for the change and restart, re-download the installer, and start it again:

Unplug all other hard drives, which I already did on the advice of a friend, so that's not it, so I unplug all USB connectors even though most of them are just to things that are turned off like a printer.

Unplug the USB mouse and the USB dongle that connects my PS2 keyboard to the computer.

Remove the sound card and uninstall it's drivers and software.

Uninstall Norton Antivirus.

About this time I'm getting annoyed to say the least. So I install the update on a flash drive and try to boot to it to install from there. The computer skips booting to the flash drive and goes right to the hard drive, I must have the BIOS set to that drive first, to save boot time. Ok, so I reboot, hit the key to go to the BIOS to change that option and the BIOS doesn't come up, the windows 7 boot menu comes up instead. So a couple tries of that and I disconnect the hard drive and boot and can finally get to the BIOS. I poke around in there and get it to use the flash drive as a boot first before the hard drive.

OK now I've got the installer up, but it says "Hey, looks like you already started an install, click here to continue that" well, that just brings me to win7 again and running the updater from there just does the same thing.

Back to the flash drive again, only now it doesn't boot to it, even with it set as the first boot device, it gets ignored. So I re-download the installer again and create a new copy on the flash drive. It still gets ignored.

Reboot and poke around in the BIOS again, find an option (accidentally) to select a device and boot to it immediately, so I select the flash drive and get the installer again. Get to the point where I select a drive to install on and it says it can't install on that drive because it's MBR and something something blah blah.

Go back and delete the partial install on the hard drive and reboot, getting to the BIOS and picking the USB drive and getting the installer. This time it lets me install on that drive and says, "Yeah we'll save all your old stuff to windows.old" great, off it goes, and take about 15 minutes, which is now four hours or so after I started.

Get to the desktop and break for lunch, then when I'm back, install updates and download Chrome and here I am. Since it wasn't an upgrade but a fresh install, I have nothing installed, no games, no utilities, nothing. I've put the sound card back in now I have to find win10 drivers for it and then reinstall everything else.

Oh, and while reading about windows 10 install issues, I find a quick mention that if you can do an upgrade, even after the free upgrade period ends (which was three years ago) you can still hit a couple buttons in the right order and get a free upgrade. Ouch.

Oh again, all the stuff in my documents is gone, it's not in the windows.old folder, which is just the windows and application folders, no documents or personal folders at all. Good thing I made those backups.

[Art Blade]

Jesus. I mean, not as if stuff like that hadn't happened to me before. But still.. reading that makes me cringe thinking about those times. I did the free upgrade from 7 to 10, from USB, and I don't remember having had any problems with that, funny as it may sound. However, generally speaking, I normally install from disc. That upgrade was the only one I ever did.

[Art Blade]

I think I need to clarify the last sentence. I only upgraded windows once, from 7 to 10. The other installations were from scratch with the respective OS installation from CD. When I upgraded win7, I had to download something to be able to get w10, and that required booting from a USB stick. So I too had to go through the BIOS stuff but that was relatively easy to sort out, and from then the upgrade went straight through, as far as I remember without hiccups.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah as it was, I couldn't upgrade anyway because of whatever issue makes the installer crash, so it's a clean install, which is technically better, but more hassle, as I now have to re-install everything. The issue is, on my computer, the keyboard is PS2 but there's no PS2 port so I have a USB converter on it to use the keyboard. Thing is, with all the other USB stuff plugged in, the keyboard doesn't get recognized until the OS boots, so I have to unplug all USB stuff so the keyboard is found at boot so I can hit the button to enter BIOS. Pain in the neck and really my fault for using an old keyboard, but I like it and they don't make one similar in USB.

So, just after posting the above, I started installing the sound card. I just got it done. Yep, TWO HOURS to install the sound card. The biggest issue is Creative's web site is impossible to find what you need. Especially for "legacy products" like my card. Props to them for still supporting old stuff as my card is now something like ten years old, but really their web site could use a make over. The problem is, it's impossible to tell what card you have by what it says on the front panel. Mine just says "X-Fi" and "Fatal1ty" so I go looking for those keywords and find a driver for windows 10 updated a few days ago no less (yay!) that supports a list of 8 or so "X-Fi Fatal1ty" cards. Run it and it says it can't find the card. Look in device manager and the card is there and windows says it's working, and it is, but only using SPDIF output. I'm using analog to a 5.1 speaker set sooooooo...... off searching again. After several posts on various forums and trying various things, I come across some posts on Reddit about it and people are saying, "Yay! This update works for me on card "X-Fi Fatal1ty blah blah". Some other people say it doesn't w0#k with their cards, and answers tell them to go to another Reddit post that has a different driver, so I try that one, nope. Another post has a link to a different download page on the Creative site where you can pick from a bunch of different drivers for various "X-Fi" and "Fatal1ty" cards so I pick the one mentioned and that works. Friggin' finally. Two hours later.

Time for supper, then I can reconnect my other hard drives (hope that goes smoothly) and see about installing important stuff like games.

[Art Blade]

heh, I remember one installation when, of all things, my ethernet adapter wasn't recognised. On-board ethernet. I had to grab a separate ethernet card from an old PC and plug that one in to go online again in order to find a driver...

If I remember correctly, that was my first contact with w10, a true OEM installation. Meaning, I had no CDs, only a partition with some restore stuff on disk. They had apparently packed working drivers on it, so I saw w10, internet worked, and then I waved it good-bye, format disk, installed win7 and then.. that didn't recognise the on-board card because reasons. Too new for generic win7 disc drivers which didn't w0#k. No discs, nothing, no internet even.. great.

However, I was amazed when I upgraded to w10. It worked immediately and pulled all the driver updates from the net by itself.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sounds typical. Though windows 10 on my laptop went smoothly once I used the plain version from Microsoft and not the bloatware version that came with it from HP.

I've gotten the hard drives hooked back up, and starting to test games. Most of them w0#k fine, but a couple won't w0#k probably because some support files aren't installed like direct X or something. So I have to re-install a few. Some have my save games probably because they are on the cloud save with steam but others don't probably because I haven't played them in a while and steam never saved the game to the cloud. Ah well. But it does seem to run faster? Not sure if win 10 is just faster or if it's a fresh install of windows which always seems to run fast before it gets bogged down. It also runs the computer cooler so the fans aren't screaming all the time. Heck even playing games only one of the fans on the video card came on and one of the case fans hasn't come on yet that I've noticed. Just idling the win7 system was noisy and playing a game meant all fans were at top speed.

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

Sorry to hear about all you woes, Dweller. Why can't these things ever go smoothly? That's a rhetorical question, of course, we know why - it's because Microsoft Hopefully the worst is behind you now and you can get down to some serious gaming again soon. Best of luck, buddy

I was lucky, sort of. Well, not really. Win10 came already installed on the new rig I bought a year or two ago, so I never had to go through the upgrade wringer. So not really lucky, I just paid my way out of strife

I'm quite happy with W10 actually, it does seem to load up and run a lot faster than 7, but I don't know how much of that is down to the new hardware and a cleaner HDD. At least some, I'm sure. One oddity though - occasionally when I boot up it automatically fires up my browser. I don't know what that's all about. Maybe one time in about 50 boots, roughly, it does that. Doesn't seem to have anything to do with updates as it's done it while I've been watching and there are no updating messages or anything.

I like my rig too, it's as quiet as a mouse normally. If I run a heavy game it speaks up a little, but not much more than a whisper.

[PZ]

Sounds typical. Though windows 10 on my laptop went smoothly once I used the plain version from Microsoft and not the bloatware version that came with it from HP.

I've had experience with HP and other vendor specific versions of windows - none of them were worth anything, and almost always caused some kind of problem