Windows 10 Upgrade, should I allow it? For the most part Windows 10 is a decent Operating System.
There are over 200 million installs and Microsoft’s goal is one billion.
There are some issues with Windows 10 that may cause grief for some
users.
Isn’t Windows 10 Upgrade a Better Operating System?
Certainly Windows 10 has a much better reputation than Windows 8.
Our recommendation would be to upgrade Windows 8 unless you have applications that are not officially supported for Windows 10.
If you are using Windows 7, you may want to keep the O/S. It will lose extended support for security patches in 2020 but by then you will may want a new computer.
Is Windows 10 Upgrade Secure?
There are some security issues with the default settings but
It’s easy enough to change those.
Overall we think Windows 10 is secure but you may want to change the settings.
Keep in mind that you are already tracked by the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft.
In some cases, you don’t have to be logged in to be tracked. Certainly you are tracked if you are logged into their accounts.
That said Windows 10 is not any more intrusive than Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, …
All Programs Are Compatible with Windows 10 Upgrade, Right?
Some folks assume that Windows 10 is compatible with their applications
since it runs a test prior to the upgrade.
While the test is a good precaution it’s a Herculean task to test every
application in the world not to mention applications you may not have currently installed.
Case in Point – Windows 10 Upgrade Gone Wrong
To our dismay we have found some applications like LogMeIn Backup are not officially supported for Windows 10.
While it may work the LogMeIn team is clueless about fixing the problem or even moving your backup to another machine.
Part of the problem is with the USB drives we use for backups.
Unfortunately for us this was after the thirty-day rollback period and
moving the application required a full backup.
A full backup backs up every file. Subsequent backups are much quicker since you don’t have to backup files that don’t change.
Note that moving backups requires a lot of time for the full backup and being cut off from the previous backups is disconcerting too.
Some of our remote full backups take twenty hours.
Obviously we were not happy with this pitfall of Windows 10 and in the end wiped our computer and installed Windows 7.
My Hardware is Supported for the Windows 10 Upgrade , Right?
In most Windows 10 Upgrade cases, you probably won’t have issues with hardware if it was
installed prior to the upgrade. In theory Windows 10 would warn you if the hardware was incompatible.
USB external drives may not be compatible with Windows 10.
Manufacturers like Western Digital and Seagate may not a Windows 10 driver that works reliably for relatively new drives.
We found that our external drives using USB 3 were not compatible. This was very disconcerting since most of our files are backed up to external drives.
In our case, LogMeIn backups and even Windows Explorer couldn’t get the drives to show a listing until we installed a Windows 7 driver!
Even with the Windows 7 driver, we suspect we didn’t get USB 3 speeds but never measured.
How Did I End Up With Windows 10 Upgrade?
Microsoft has gotten more aggressive in pushing out Windows 10. They
made it a recommended upgrade so it upgraded if you had automatic updates on.
Downs Consulting recommends Windows Updates so the dilemma is that we don’t necessarily want the upgrade but do want updates.
An alternative is to use something like GWX Control Panel.
GWX Control Panel should stop the upgrade to Windows 10.
Restore Old O/S – How Do I Go Back to My Previous Operating System (O/S)?
If you ran into as many issues as we did then you will want to revert back
to your old O/S.
Gracefully Revert to Your Old O/S
If you decide to revert your old O/S in the thirty-day window you may back out gracefully.
To uninstall Windows 10 within the first month, go to the Start menu and choose “settings.” From the resulting menu, choose “update and security,” then click “recovery.” You’ll be given the option to “go back” to Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, depending on what you had previously. Click “get started.”
Reinstall Windows
If you are beyond the thirty-day window you are looking at a re-install of
some sort.
Image Backup
If you made an image backup of your system you may want to restore it
but that will wipe out all your data too.
Likewise you could use the factory image backup to restore everything back to the day your computer arrived.
To install the factory image backup, you probably have to press specific keys during start-up. F8 & Advanced Boot Options work for some Dell computers.
Image backups will restore all software that was installed at the time the image was made.
A factory image may contain trail software that they sent with the computer.
A personal image will have the software, data and updates that resided on the computer at the time of the backup.
New Installation
New installation is not for the faint at heart but it may keep your files in
Windows.old. This is a nice backup but we recommend backing up your files to an external drive as a precaution.
You will have to restore all the Windows updates and any software you use .
Obtaining Recovery Media
Ideally you created backup disks when you received your computer. If you
can locate these disks then you can restore the factory image backup.
If you don’t have recovery media then you will have to contact the computer manufacturer. This may be a nominal fee if you are no longer in warranty.
Our Experience Obtaining Recovery Media
Hopefully you won’t have as much trouble obtaining recovery media as we
did. Maybe you can avoid some of the pitfalls of our experience.
It started out well enough with our first contact at Dell and we were prepared to pay the $20 or so since we were no longer in warranty. So far, so good.
We ran into problems when they wanted our account. Since we were logged into our Dell Advantage account this didn’t seem to be a problem but they wanted an account number.
We didn’t have an account number on our purchases or our online account.
Seven conversations and two hours later we assume the original person wanted a financial account which we didn’t have. We finally explained we wanted to pay by credit card and got the media in a couple of days.
To add insult to injury, we discovered later that we had a $20 credit we could have used for this transaction.
Backup You Files
As a general rule, most of your files will be in your User folder. If the user
is “Randy” then the user folder will look something like the following:
C:\Windows.old\Users\Randy – backup profile in previous Windows
C:\Users\Randy – profile in current Windows
Once you have you files backed up you can initiate a new install and preferably keep old files in Windows.old.
You can always remove this later if space is an issue.
Removing Windows.old
Removing Windows.old should be done via Disk Cleanup.
Here’s the proper way to delete the Windows.old folder: Step 1: Click in Windows‘ search field, type Cleanup, then click Disk Cleanup. Step 2: Click the “Clean up system files” button. Step 3: Wait a bit while Windows scans for files, then scroll down the list until you see “Previous Windows installation(s).