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Oct 10

The Joys Of The Free Upgrade To Windows 10

I just upgraded my main gaming computer from Windows 7 to 10, at the end of September 2015. I upgraded my secondary system, also from Windows 7, at the end of July 2015. During August, I made an attempt to apply the upgrade on my laptop, but after it failed three times, I decided to delay this upgrade until I have time to figure out why it doesn’t work, since the failure gives no helpful message to allow an easy solution.

First thing, as others have mentioned, when it works, the upgrade is fairly easy and painless. It works much like any Microsoft Windows Update patch, downloaded and installed without any special effort on the part of the user. Once available, it is about a 3 GB download, which then automatically installs and updates your full Windows system, with no need to enter any information, key, or update any programs or settings. It does automatically set up the new Edge browser as your default web browser, but you can easily change this after installation completes.

So my first upgrade went fairly smooth. My secondary system was upgrade previously from Windows XP, and that from a standard (Disc) install, so there were some potential complications from the older OS installations, but the actual install was straightforward. It told me that my audio driver was outdated, but didn’t automatically find the new Windows 10 version. The graphics driver didn’t update automatically either, but I normally download directly from NVidia, so that wasn’t a real problem either. My games are mostly on Steam or Origin, so I had no worries about where I would find them on the Windows menu. My only real worry was available hard drive space, due to the issue of automatic updates (mostly games) eating up space as we install more games.

I can’t say the same about my laptop. I made sure I had hard drive space, but multiple tries at allowing the automatic installer to do the upgrade resulted in failures without ever getting Windows 10 installed. I use my laptop when travelling, and don’t have days of time to commit to tying it up, unusable, while I look for a solution by trial and error. If it is a driver issue, it could be a lot harder to find a solution. HP hasn’t offered updates for a few years. I did a system restore to undo the entire upgrade attempt, then refused to let the Windows 10 installation start.

That leads me to the last upgrade. I’m not sure of the schedule Microsoft is using, but I seem to have to wait a month between upgrades. I finally got the notice for upgrade availability, and let it run. It failed, but it gave me an understandable — and apparently common — error message: Not enough free space in System Reserved Partition. This partition is created from a Windows 8 or 7 fresh installation on a new hard drive (not partitioned or formatted), but the size that Windows 7 uses is too small for Windows 10. So all I had to do was resize the partition.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_10-windows_install/error-we-couldnt-update-the-system-reserved/9154c2b1-b807-439d-8873-9699415eb657

For a techie, this is no big deal, but for a typical user with little technical knowledge, this could be daunting. The fact that you could render your system unusable if you do it wrong makes it something which would seem to me to be a place where an automated tool to do the job, as part of the upgrade, would be a good idea.

Once done, the upgrade ran easily. I did have to let it download it again. You can bypass that process, but I wanted to see how the automatic process would run. This was one reason that I didn’t continue upgrade attempts on my laptop, but will make sure, before I try again, to have the install files handy so I can do repeat attempts without waiting.

The audio and video drivers again were not automatically updated. The updater told me that my audio driver software wasn’t supported, but didn’t download, or even make an offer to attempt to download, the available Windows 10 driver. I used device manager and told it to upgrade the driver, and my sound device worked again. I have four audio devices on the system, and two were recognized right off, so that isn’t bad. I also had to run to NVidia for my video driver, but that worked very well.

Both of these things are a little beyond a user with no technical information, but not terribly hard. Still, it would be nicer if the upgrade at least offered a connection to the manufacturer website. AMD and NVidia are the two major video device makers, and a lot of systems have them.

When I looked to run and use some of my programs, I found another issue. The “all apps” list in the menu did not, in fact, list all the programs installed on the computer. I have a lot of non-game programs on the system, and had to search for links to start them. Most were available from desktop icons, but it would be nice if this just worked normally. I do have a lot of apps installed, both games and productivity. MSI Afterburner is one of the missing apps, and it is obviously one I use often for gaming. My classic Opera web browser was also missing. Still, once I figured it out, it was pretty easy, and most people don’t have loads of apps on their system.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_desktop/some-win32-apps-missing-from-start-menu-all/b41f1f57-5af3-468d-896f-bd283aa6cfdf

The current limit of 512 apps is very easy to hit if you have a lot of software, especially considering that a lot of programs create multiple entries on the Start Menu.

The OS itself seems to run just fine, once installed. My game performance is slightly better — Windows 7 is inferior to both 8 and 10 in terms of CPU management. I haven’t run into programs which ran under Windows 7 and no longer work, which is good, but it could happen. My favorite games all work, my web browser and other apps work as expected, and I am quite happy with the results.

Still, the installation isn’t yet truly typical home user friendly. Requiring a user to resize a partition in order to upgrade pretty much puts it into the send it to the shop, or find a techie friend to help. The driver upgrades aren’t hard to do, but still are things which could be automated. Even just offering a link to the suitable site to get the drivers and install them would be better than the total lack of advice given.

On the best positive side, the upgrade has a full revert/restore feature, so if you can’t get it working right, you can undo it. If you have used Windows 8, 10 is simply an improved version and will feel familiar. For a casual Windows 7 user, it wasn’t hard to pick up. For someone with more technical expertise, it is more a matter of wanting to learn a new system as a tradeoff for getting improved features.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/review-windows-10-is-the-best-version-yet-once-the-bugs-get-fixed/

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