I agree with you 100%. I'm sticking with W7 on my primary third gen i7 tower and second gen i5 laptop. But I had no choice when I got a sixth gen i3 Dell a few days ago. I let it gather up its updates and then forced the AU to get it over with. In reading up on the AU issues here and other forum/news areas, I wonder how much of the problems are associated with systems that went with the free W10 update from W7 or W8 and then to W10AU. Because historically we all know, well some of us, how smoothly those "windows.old" updates go. Except for a few system things that are "done" differently from what I got used to on my non-AU so far W10 test system which started out with the Technical Preview, I've not seen any problems with the store-bought W10 > W10AU transformation. (The Dell was built on July 27.) FYI: I'm running Defender, WAR+ and MBAE-Trial with WFW and Glasswire Free.
Microsoft had promised a "secret" registry key to bypass the new digital signature requirements (Microsoft Windows cross-signing / SHA-256 / EV Cert) while still leaving Secure Boot on. Traditional digital signature still required, of course. This was supposedly only available under NDA to developers. Confirmed working. Spoiler: The Golden Goose Code: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CI\Policy] "UpgradedSystem"=dword:00000001 Courtesy of user 100 over at MDL forums. Link: https://forums.mydigitallife.info/t...estion/page2?p=1272392&viewfull=1#post1272392 So essentially what this does is tells the system that it was upgraded to Windows 10, as opposed to clean install, for example. Therefore allowing you to bypass the new digital signature requirements that came along with Anniversary Update. This is great for testing scenarios or also some cases where users need to use older drivers. At some point (don't recall the date at the moment) Microsoft will force all upgraded systems to the new digital signature requirements anyway, but this can buy some users more time if need be.
I don't have much tolerance for it either. The laptop came with Win 8 pre-installed, but I'm not going back to that. LOL I've got a spare Win 7 license I can use on it, which is probably what I'm going to do. I have to apply at least three times as many tweaks on a fresh Win 10 install than I do on Win 7, and there is a lot of crap forced on me that I don't want.
MS is definitely taking advantage of its monopolistic status and this type of corporate arrogance will damage their image, but I'm furious with another 'giant' that is Samsung who were notified 20 months ago by MS to start producing new drivers for Win 10, and yet they kept quietly advising customers not to upgrade first to Win 8.1 and then to Win 10, let's not even mention Win 10 AU. Absolutely unacceptable, I spent a lot of money for a machine that is well built, but in 3 years I only had problems with upgrades because of the whimsical bickering of two companies who are too big to fail, sounds familiar doesn't it? I can't do much against MS but I will certainly advice people to steer away from Samsung products.
Well, I must eat my words here today. I spent 6 hours just doing the initial update of Win 7 (240 updates), and when it rebooted to configure updates, after the reboot, it said "failure to configure updates, reverting changes... blah blah blah". Lol... I have never ever seen that happen, and yet it did, and I wasted 6 hours just to see that in 7. So..... long sigh... for now if I want 7, I will either just run an SP1 image with no updates, or I will build 7 with the rollup updates, that will work as Ive done that before. I just installed Win 10 AU again, to have another look. Maybe I was too hasty, but I rather doubt it. So tonight I'm on 10 AU. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, right?
I had some fun, not! ...trying to install PandaGlobalProtection 2016 late last night, with the install being monitored by RevoUninstaller. Then for some reason it wouldn't install, so I ran the installer again. But, I thought I would restart, which I did and apparently, and I got this: Anyway, to cut to the chase, following some more updates that I have no control over, I have gone from build 420 which I still had on 28August, to the situation, currently, i.e. build 545... P.S. I am doing my thing, that is installing software, while Microsoft is doing it's thing unbeknownst to me at the same time. A At least, in XP Pro, I had more control as to what and when I allowed Windows Updates.
After all the bad news for weeks now being forced to update from Win 10 to the AU, I think I finally found a solution (touch wood): I did a clean install of Win 10 AU and applied Samsung patches and updates afterwards. All of a sudden everything is hunky dory and works very well. The upgrade wasn't taking me anywhere, and forcing the AU upgrade I was going in circles. The strange thing is that the display adapter installed at the moment is the same I had with the native Win 8 which was subsequently replaced for Win 8.1. I don't want to try to understand, the whole functionality of my machine is restored 100%, that's the main thing. Yes I'll have to re-install all of my programs, but for some reasons my clean install so far is about 30 GB whereas the upgraded version no matter how much I would slim it down was about 60 GB. From my experience there are definitely problems with upgrading, I just wish I could have done it earlier and saved me all these troubles...
Osaban, I've been experimenting with fresh Win10 1607 installs. Installing into a 35 GB partition, the used space was 14 GB after cleanup. Installing into a 15 GB partition, the used space was 10 GB after cleanup. Cleanup included disabling Hibernation, CCleaner, deleting all data in C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download and the Temp folders as well as Disk Clean-up including Clean-up system files. I've never had a problem with upgrading Win8 or Win10 OS. Fresh installs have only been for tests. I found it interesting that the used space after an upgrade (and cleanup) was less than the used space prior to the upgrade. My current computer is almost 4 years old. I built it and installed Win8. Then the various Win8 and Win10 upgrades. The used space now in the Win10 OS partition is 25 GB. I can restore a backup image in just over a minute.
Brian I think your small size installations comes from the fact (knowing you here at Wilders) that you always have small partitions only for the OS, and also I'm sure your knowledge about what is important and what can be safely deleted. My 30 GB is what I have without any programs (that would probably add another 6-8 GB) and after having deleted the folder Windows.old which was a staggering 60 GB! The Windows folder alone is 18 GB therefore even after deleting system restore points and other bits and pieces, I don't think I could get less than 26-27 GB, I don't disable Hibernation though which might account for 1-2 GB.
Osaban, Thanks for the reminder. I disable System Restore too. Apart from the above, nothing else is deleted. I install programs into the C: drive but unlike my son I don't have any games. I think his OS partition is around 200 GB used space. Have you run "Clean-up system files"? Put a tick in everything. Cleaning up old Windows Updates can remove several GB. To disable hibernation (Admin Command Prompt)... powercfg -h off To re-enable hibernation... powercfg -h on Edit... I leave the Page File alone and mine is 2432 MB. I recall it was 16 GB with the first Win8 and I manually set it to 2 GB. What size is your Page File? Edit... My Windows folder is Size 19.1 GB. Size on disk 14.1 GB. Edit... The Special Users folders, 98 GB, have been moved to the D: drive. Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Video.
Indeed. Had I known the issues, on my primary laptop at least, I would have stayed on the original OS. Strangely, my older laptops, 5 years + old, Win 7, have had few or no issues. But my newest laptop < 2 years old, with 8.1, has had issues. I may attempt a clean install soon, when I have the 'courage'. I wonder also, one reads on the forums all the problems, but what has really been the ratio of 'good' vs 'bad' upgrades. But I can't imagine M$ has increased their fan base, especially in the SMB market.
I've upgraded tens of computers from Windows 7 (and a few from Windows 8.1) to Windows 10 without any problems. There was one I did a clean install on because there were some issues after upgrading. But the others were done as an upgrade, keeping everything installed. On the one with issues, more than likely, I would have been able to fix these issues if I'd taken the time to do so rather than doing a clean install. I've had some problems upgrading from Windows 10 to the new Anniversary Update. I got the upgrade to complete on one computer with help from a member here, and on another one I decided it was easier just to do a clean install as I had very little installed on the computer. There also have been a few computers I've done a clean install of Windows 10 on, as there was nothing I wanted to keep from the Windows 7 install, so it seemed like the better option. Overall, I find that the upgrade works very well. There have been occasional driver issues, but nothing too serious. The worst problem I've come across is one laptop that always output the video to the VGA port instead of the internal display when it loads Windows. This is resolved by pressing the power button to put the computer to sleep, and then pressing it again to wake it up again. This apparently was also an issue with Windows 8.x on the same computer, and there is no solution. But, once it's woken from sleep there are no display issues. However, the same problem exists if a clean install is done. What issues did you have?
Yeah, those rollups help out a lot. I did a fresh install of Win 7 on my desktop recently and installed the rollups first thing. It made a big difference. Winupdate worked fine afterwards, and I had some security updates mostly, and got it totally up to date in just a few minutes after that.
After upgrade to 1607, laptop won't shutdown or restart, just a spinning circle. Have to power down. Worked in 1511. I haven't exhausted all avenues yet. I currently suspect it may be my Logitech bluetooth mouse (though Device Manager tells me it has the latest driver). Maybe I have to disable it. I say this because on my upgraded Win 7 computer, after recent Win 10 cumulative updates, I found I have to remove my wireless Logitech mouse USB dongle for it to restart.
Brian, I'll try to compare your figures with mine: I'm not a gamer and my picture folder is stored elsewhere at the moment. Running the Disk clean up would free at the most 1GB with all checked. I use Hibernation a lot, believe it or not it resumes the system in 5 seconds... But thanks for the command prompts, it's good to know when needed. Edit: Sorry 5 seconds is the time in sleep mode, recovering the system from hibernation takes 18 seconds... My pagefile is 1920 MB and my Windows folder is 18 GB, size on disk is 17 GB. I still don't understand why there is such a discrepancy with your system, although I have no SSD and 1 TB of space... I know that reducing the volume it speeds up backups and recoveries, but when I use my USB 3 external hard drive, backups of up to 65 GB can be achieved with Macrium free within 10-12 minutes, I think with the paid version (which I'm about to buy) I can even improve such performance...
I had an issue where Windows wasn't shutting down and I think I've discovered it being caused by running PrivaZer after Windows has been updated and choosing to let PrivaZer shut down the system after it ran. I believe it was because Windows Disk Cleanup [initiated by PrivaZer] was still running at the time. If left alone long enough, maybe ½ an hour or more, the machine would eventually shut down. Since then I've got in the habit of running Disk Cleanup before I run PrivaZer and the non-shutdown situation hasn't reoccurred. Of course this may not be the source of your problem but I thought it worth mentioning. Cheers.
Hi Osaban... In my experience, a clean install is always superior to an upgrade. At least on my machine. My original upgrade from 7 to 10 was terrible. Performance was really bad. A clean install fixed things right up. After that, all was good.
Yeah, that's one way to go, doing the rollups and then enabling Win Updates afterwards.. I might try that, thanks for the idea.
Yes Kerodo as a matter of fact after reading of your positive experience with a clean install I decided to go down that road too. It is more time consuming of course but well worth it if it fixes the problems once and for all. If I had to roughly calculate the time I spent for botched upgrades with Win 8.1 and now the AU, I would say at least 2 weeks, which is an incredible waste of time. We all know more or less here at Wilders how to recover our systems, but I can imagine the sense of helplessness of many users who find themselves with a malfunctioning computer after a bad upgrade they didn't want in the first place.
That's what concerns me most about the way MS is doing the Win 10 upgrades, supposedly 1-2 times per year. I know upgrades seem to work for some, but I also know that upgrades cause problems for many others. It just doesn't seem like a wise way to do things. I was impressed with how fast 10 AU installed, just 20 minutes, and that's on fairly slow hardware. Then another 20 minutes is all it took to update. Pretty easy.... Glad it worked out for you also.
Kerodo, I'd re-word this to "I know upgrades seem to work for many, but I also know that upgrades cause problems for some others." At least that's my experience. I've never seen an upgrade issue. I advise my friends against fresh installs. On my computer an upgrade takes 10 minutes and then a cleanup might take another 10 minutes. All programs and settings are preserved from the previous OS. Yes, it looks like we'll have to do this every six months.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I've seen many people with upgrade issues and failures, and rarely have I seen people with successful upgrades. Let's face it, it's a failed methodology that MS is using, and in time, it will only cause more and more problems. Once again, IMO and experience, a clean install is THE only best way to go. PS - As for the speed of your upgrades, most people also don't use SSD's..
I'm really mesmerized at the speed of your operations... I've never had any upgrade performed in less than 40 minutes, without my interfering in the process, everything was automated and I have a super fast connection (500 Mbps download speed). As Kerodo points out it is probably due to the SSD.
