Windows 10 Upgrade Strategies, Pitfalls and Fixes As MSFT Servers Are Hit Hard

MojoKid writes: The upgrade cycle begins, with Microsoft's latest operating system--the highly anticipated Windows 10--rolling out over Windows Update for free, for users of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. For those that are ready to take the plunge over the weekend, there are some things to note. So far, Microsoft has been rolling out the upgrade in waves and stages. If you are not one of the 'lucky' ones to be in the first wave, you can take matters into your own hands and begin the upgrade process manually. While the process is mostly simple, it won't be for everyone. This guide steps through a few of the strategies and pitfalls. There are two main methods to upgrade, either through Windows Update or through the Media Creation Tool. In either case, you will need to have opted-in for the Windows 10 Free Upgrade program to reserve your license. Currently, the Windows Update method is hit or miss due to the requirement for additional updates needing to be installed first and Microsoft's servers being hit hard, leading to some rather humorous error messages like the oh-so helpful description, "Something Happened." Currently, it would be best to avoid the Windows Update upgrade, at least for the time being. Numerous issues with licensing have been reported, requiring manual activation either through the dreaded phone call, or by running slmgr.vbs /ato at the command prompt to force license registration.

Comments

My upgrade strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

My upgrade strategy is to stay with GNU/Linux!

Re:My upgrade strategy

[jellomizer]

Which is fine.
I had my Linux for a desktop kick for a while back in the late 1990 and early 2000s
then I was on on Solaris for a while, then Mac OS.
I am actually trailing on a Windows kick, it is getting to a point where I may want to switch a again.

Nothing is wrong with any of these system they have their pluses and minus.
However OS X and Windows, is less struggling for hardware compatibility. Linux seems to be hit or miss, unless you invest a lot of time trying to determine if it is compatible enough, as many of discussions on such hardware fail to state if it works with a distribution or not.

Linux: I tend to prefer when I need to be very productive, When I need to crunch a lot of data. Also it is handy for cases when I need to do something outside the box, as it doesn't dumb down lower level access.

Re:My upgrade strategy

[drinkypoo]

However OS X and Windows, is less struggling for hardware compatibility. Linux seems to be hit or miss, unless you invest a lot of time trying to determine if it is compatible enough, as many of discussions on such hardware fail to state if it works with a distribution or not.

IME the big stuff is iffy on Linux, the small stuff on Windows. But there's a user in this thread finding that Windows 10 refuses to install on his Core 2 Quad. Maybe Linux actually has better hardware support than Windows? I think it does. I think if you took a windows disc and a Linux disc and tried to install both on every single PC on the planet, that you would have better luck with the Linux disc. In the trial, you are permitted to install only authorized packages, meaning drivers either direct from the OS distributor (from the package archive, from windows update, on the CD) or from the OEM or ODM (e.g. Compaq or Atheros.)

I think you'd have less machines that just outright refuse to install, and you'd also have more working peripherals at the end of the day. For example, all but one of the scanners I have ever owned, I got cheap used because they weren't supported on newer versions of windows even though the same scanner protocol was still in use; the manufacturer simply removes support for the old hardware from the new version of the driver, even though the new driver is perfectly capable of operating it. HP is especially horrible about this, never ever buy a scanner from them and expect to use it through an OS upgrade. Same for all-in-one imaging devices. But everyone does it. Meanwhile, SANE just keeps adding support for more devices...

Re:My upgrade strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are upgrading from Windows 7 or 8, there is practically no legacy hardware Windows 10 needs to support, since win7 only supported only the most common and recent hardware. Linux is far ahead in hardware support and system requirements.

Re:My upgrade strategy

[PopeRatzo]

Linux: I tend to prefer when I need to be very productive

When I want to be very productive, I step away from the computer.

Re:My upgrade strategy

[aaaaaaargh!]

Hey, my upgrade strategy is almost the same, to keep Windows 7 for games and audio recording and otherwise stay with GNU/Linux.

Re: My upgrade strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux hardware compatibility is hardly the concern OS X hardware compatibility is. Source: I just built a hackintosh. Sure Apple branded hardware works just fine (that is if your smbios is new enough to support Yosemite), but if we're talking generally OS X has the most fragile hardware ecosystem. No ps/2 support, AMD CPUs marginally supported and only by localized hacks, only Intel chipsets supported, limited disk controller support, ... the list goes on.

Re:My upgrade strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Good strategy.

CPU not compatible

[scsirob]

Windows 10 upgrade tells me my CPU is not compatible. It's a Core 2 Q8400, and I can't find what's not compatible about it. There are descriptions on how to 'refresh' the detection system but so far no luck.

Re:CPU not compatible

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Are you upgrading from Windows 7 (or earlier, or Linux), or from Windows 8/8.1?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/what-is-pae-nx-sse2>Windows 8/8.1 introduced a requirement for SSE2, PAE, and NX.

NX is sometimes disabled in the BIOS. As far as I know there's no additional processor limitations on Windows 10.

Re:CPU not compatible

[ewhenn]

I rand into this issue with windows 8.1 and my Q8400 on an Intel DP35DP motherboard (actual Intel manufactured board). You can see this article for details, given your similar hardware it's likely rooted in the same or a similar cause.

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Re:CPU not compatible

[LVSlushdat]

Yeah.. I have a Windows 7 Pro virtualbox vm I was going to upgrade to 10, the 7 copy has been blessed and updated by MS, but I'm ALSO told the cpu is not compatible.. The cpu is a Xeon Quadcore W3520, and as far I can tell thats a supported cpu...

Re:CPU not compatible

[ttucker]

I have a Windows 7 Pro virtualbox vm

Full stop, it doesn't matter what chip the host system is running. You need to ensure that VirtualBox is providing all of the required features in the virtual processor.

Re:CPU not compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the VM mostly run on the host CPU?

Re:CPU not compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly, yes, but by definition it is a *virtual* machine. Not all processor features are necessarily exposed.

Re:CPU not compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely that: You MUST enable PAE/NX on the CPU features tab in the settings otherwise the VM won;t know that the CPU can do it.

Re:CPU not compatible

[PRMan]

I upgraded my daughter's MacBook Pro in Parallels and it upgraded just fine, so apparently Parallels solved this some time ago.

Re: CPU not compatible

[cyber-vandal]

I remember the good old days when developers actual told their users what the problem was when there was an error. Now they just either do nothing or show "Something happened" and leave the poor user trying to find out what's going on via Google with fuck all idea of what to look for.

Re:CPU not compatible

[ttucker]

Isn't the VM mostly run on the host CPU?

The instructions are translated to mostly run directly on the host CPU, particularly with new CPU features to support virtual workloads.

Still, the translation is dictated by the virtual host software, and it is the first thing to investigate when a guest needs more/different CPU features. This inquiry may eventually reveal that VirtualBox requires that the host CPU has NX to support it in a guest. More likely it either does not support NX, or it needs to be enabled for guests.

Re:CPU not compatible

[ttucker]

I upgraded my daughter's MacBook Pro in Parallels and it upgraded just fine, so apparently Parallels solved this some time ago.

VirtualBox is free, and definitely inferior to VMWare and Parallels.

Re: CPU not compatible

[ttucker]

To be fair, Windows keeps a lot of helpful logs. There is always the system event log. The Windows Update tool also keeps a detailed history of upgrade success or failure, in grotesque technical detail.

Re: CPU not compatible

[kungfuj35u5]

That is a somewhat harsh requirement but probably a commendable one. I guess this also means ASLR may be turned on by default for their binaries. The stack protection is probably well worth the performance hit. It also means though that the a third party little utility I wrote to inspect values at specified memory addresses for a certain game will probably no longer work once it's recompiled.

Re:CPU not compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

That's kind of backwards to what the GP said. He made the impression that it does not matter what chip the host system is running if some kind of "virtual processor" can provide those features.

Re:CPU not compatible

[jp10558]

For what I've tried, it seems faster than VMWare Desktop on my Lenovo W520. And so far it's done everything I need in a VM. It's not a hypervisor, but for desktop virtualization, I can't see paying for VMWare anymore.

Re:CPU not compatible

[ttucker]

I used to feel the same way about VirtualBox, until I paid the money for Workstation.

VirtualBox has lame support for 3d acceleration, making it piss poor for running desktop software that a human will actually use.

If you ran a benchmark comparing VMWare to VirtualBox for performance, like a non-anecdotal one, it might affect your general opinion on things.

Re: CPU not compatible

[cyber-vandal]

True but sometimes it's more hindrance than help especially in the case of "an unexpected error has occurred". Microsoft error messages are often too wordy and utterly useless at the same time.

Re:CPU not compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone explain to me how on earth a mainboard is supposed to disable cmpxchg16b support in a CPU? Unlike NX and some other features, I don't believe it's even possible for the bios to disable it in the CPU - there's no reason to since it does not affect compatibility or security, and it's not like intel builds in switches to disable any and all instructions, although that could have stopped the F00F bug.

Re:CPU not compatible

[WndSks]

Win 8.1 added a couple of extra requirements on top of what the initial Windows 8 needed, the important one is support for 16byte atomic exchange (the old unused bits tricks no longer work since they support more RAM in 8.1)

Re:CPU not compatible

[ttucker]

It is correct either way. The host can have a CPU feature that is hidden in the guest CPU, but it can also provide a virtual version of a feature to the guest using software (read very slow), even if that feature is not available on the host CPU.

The guest only sees the virtual CPU, and typically has no idea what the "real" CPU is.

Re: CPU not compatible

[ttucker]

It really can be a junk heap, with way too many 32 bit integer error codes and senseless register dumps.

I prefer dmesg and syslog.

Re: CPU not compatible

[thegarbz]

That is a somewhat harsh requirement

It really isn't. AMD has had NX since the introduction of the AMD64 architecture, and Intel introduced it in the Pentium 4 lineup with all but the cheapest of the Core processors supporting it as well.

You'd pushing your luck trying to run Windows 10 on a processor so old that it doesn't support NX anyway. It's almost like requiring computers to have a USB port.

Re:CPU not compatible

[greenreaper]

Are you using VirtualBox 5? They added support for a bunch of instructions.

Re:CPU not compatible

[vandamme]

Nobody "upgrades" from Linux to Windows.

"...and I never looked back" is a common phrase among switchers.

Re:CPU not compatible

[ncc74656]

I rand into this issue with windows 8.1 and my Q8400 on an Intel DP35DP motherboard

I had one of those motherboards a few years back...bought it with a Core 2 Quad Q6600, which I think would've been sometime in 2008. After maybe a couple of years or so, the motherboard started acting iffy. I kept the processor, but replaced the motherboard. It's been running on a Gigabyte EP43-UD3L ever since. It currently dual-boots Gentoo Linux and Windows 7 from an SSD, and I threw an old hard drive in it recently to try out Windows 10. It runs like a champ...probably about the same speed as Windows 7, when I had it on a hard drive. I'll most likely nuke Windows 7 off of the SSD and move Windows 10 into its place.

tl;dr: Your problem with Windows 10 most likely isn't with your processor. Try upgrading the motherboard's BIOS. If that doesn't fix it, you're most likely looking at replacing the motherboard. You can probably find something cheap on eBay that'll work. The EP43-UD3L seems decent enough; I've even had Mac OS X running on mine at one time (at least up through Snow Leopard).

Re:CPU not compatible

[RespekMyAthorati]

You can download VMWare Workstation for free from VMWare.com.

Windows 10 error messages

[invictusvoyd]

leading to some rather humorous error messages like the oh-so helpful description, "Something Happened."

Warning : Something's gonna happen
Error : Something happened
Debug : It had to happen
Crash : Why me !

Re: Windows 10 error messages

[garryknight]

In my case it was because it chose to use an old, non-working network connection. A reboot fixed it.

Re:Windows 10 error messages

[Anonymous Coward]

/pol/: It's happening!
Why didn't you stop it?
You only had to listen.

Re:Windows 10 error messages

[Sponge Bath]

Bill Lumbergh: So, Peter, what's happening? Aahh, now, are you going to go ahead and have those Windows updates for us this afternoon?

Re: Windows 10 error messages

[sr180]

In Australia is because they have their locale set to en-au and they are using en-us media.
So far the upgrade process is a mess.

Edge

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find the most annoying is how Edge treats you like a special little snowflake when you're not connected to the internet:

"You're not connected."
"And the web just isn't the same without you."
"Let's get you back online."

Blech.

Re:Edge

[jellomizer]

I really wasn't impressed with edge at all. The touch interface is very buggy, pinch zoom and scrolling doesn't work past the first few seconds, in desktop mode. the browser stuff takes up a lot of screen real-estate. And still the lack of plugins such as adblock hinders the web experience.
I still don't see the point on drawing on your web page either.

Re:Edge

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Chrome does similar cutsy stuff, eg: when a tab crashes.

Re:Edge

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's not only me who hates it when software talks down to you. All this childish nonsense is getting on my nerves.

Re:Edge

[Anonymous Coward]

They should just be honest:

"We can't spy on you if you're not online."

Re:Edge

[thegarbz]

Or the OS in general.

"Hi"
"We are getting the desktop ready for you"

The infuriating thing is this text fades in over a 4 second period like a Powerpoint slide from hell by someone who just figured out transitions are a thing.

And no don't say "Hi" to me!

Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it, but after reading the article, the problems affecting these Windows upgrades seem very minor compared to the problems I had upgrading some Debian 7 systems to Debian 8. The first clue I got that something was wrong was when the upgraded systems wouldn't completely boot. After digging into it I found out that Debian 8 uses something called systemd, and that lots of other people have experienced severe problems with it, too. Well I don't want to bore anyone with the long story of my struggles but I fought with this systemd thing for a couple of days. In the end I had to give up. I had been very happy with Debian for many years, but not any longer. I tried out FreeBSD 10 instead, which actually works really well for me. It runs the same software as Debian, but under the hood it's so much better. I can just trust it to work properly, which is something I can no longer trust Debian to do.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

I repeatedly see the people here who describe the problems they've had with systemd called "trolls".

But I'm also subscribed to many Linux distro mailing lists, including those of Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE (or whatever it is calling itself these days), Gentoo, Slackware, and so on and so on.

On the mailing lists of the distros that have switched to systemd, there have been a deluge of complaints about it.

The complaints come from lots of people, of all skill and experience levels.

People who are trying Linux for the first time are affected by systemd problems.

People who have been using Linux for decades are affected by systemd problems.

It isn't just one or two people describing problems with systemd.

It's a chronic problem affecting many people!

"Troll" isn't the right word to describe these people.

"Victim" is the right word.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[ttucker]

"Victim" is the right word.

Who is victimizing you? The unpaid volunteer maintainers of software that you also did not buy?

Just don't upgrade if systemd is a major issue. Ubuntu will be maintaining 14.04 LTS for a long time.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[geoskd]

"Victim" is the right word.

I was under the impression that SystemD wasn't yet in the stable releases, and was still just in the advanced releases. I'm 100% certain this is true for Ubuntu, as the 14.04 LTS still uses upstart.

If it is in the stable releases, then some of the maintainers need to be shot for letting unstable components into the stable releases. If it is still just in the advance releases, then why are people complaining when all the bugs haven't been worked out? Thats the whole point of advanced releases... If you insist on being on the bleeding edge, then you're going to bleed.

All I know for certain at this point is that when SystemD has some maturity behind it, I *will* switch to it; probably when the next Ubuntu LTS is released with it turned on.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[buchanmilne]

1) All other distros that are defaulting to systemd (Arch, Fedora/RHEL/CentOS, Opensuse, Mageia etc.) seem to have generated fewer uograde issues (percentage wise) than Debian. Maybe Debian rushed through the switch-to-systemd testing because they were stuck debating it for so long.
2) To be a vslid comparison, you shoulf have started with FreeBSD9, applied any customisations you had on your Debian installation, and then upgraded.

Systemd has some minor issues in some situations, bit on the whole I think it is a huge improvement (using it on multiple distros and multiple use cases such as office laptop, media player, home NAS/server, production servers at work).

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[gweihir]

I repeatedly see the people here who describe the problems they've had with systemd called "trolls".

There is a systematic marketing/PsyOps campaign aimed at discrediting anybody and everybody that dares to criticize the new one true god of systemd. The reason these people are called trolls, are insulted, theri complaints are ignored, etc. is that the systemd proponents actually have very little technological arguments in favor of systemd and none at all for the way it is pushed by force on nearly every Linux user at the moment. At the same time there is a host of convincing technological arguments against systemd, like its immature state, its instable feature set, its violation of a lot of core Unix principles, its inflexibility with regards to kernel versions it can work with, the problems it causes if you want to do something the designers have not anticipated, the unhelpfulness and arrogance of its developers, and outright demented decisions like the binary logs. Hence the proponents of systemd resort to purely emotional arguments because that is all they have. They are then pushing these as hard as they can.

Now, as to why systemd is pushed so hard despite it clearly not being ready for prime-time and it being not the best solution in a lot of scenarios even if it where, that is unclear. One plausible explanation is an "embrace&extend" move by RedHat where they want every Linux installation being dependent in a central place on a piece of software they control. Another is that the NSA and its ilk found Linux far too hard to hack and hence there was the need for a large, complex, network-connected demon that offers a lot of bugs they can then use to compromise systems. And finally, there may be desperate kernel-envy on the side of the chief developer (a known incompetent with a huge ego) who wants to basically wrap the kernel so he can see his own "accomplishments" on the same level as those of Linus.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you talking about, son?

Systemd is a product of Red Hat. Red Hat is a company that brings in over a billion dollars per year! "Unpaid volunteer maintainers" my ass! Systemd is a corporate creation by paid corporate developers.

Debian actually isn't much different. Debian's contributors are its users. Many of the major contributors are developers and system administrators who use Debian for paying clients or employers. They aren't "unpaid volunteer maintainers". They're improving Debian because their clients and/or employers paid them to! It isn't as centralized as Red Hat, but there is still big money involved.

As for Ubuntu, I'm sure you've heard of Canonical Ltd. If you haven't, it's the company with hundreds of paid employees who develop Ubuntu. Yet again, we aren't talking about "unpaid volunteer maintainers".

And your "just don't upgrade" attitude is fucking idiotic. Anyone with just a few years of experience in the industry knows how full of shit that idea is. 2019 will be upon us before you know it, at which point some sort of an upgrade will be necessary. You're basically saying, "Keep on using Windows XP and IE 6, they'll be supported for years!", and idea which we know know is retarded.

I've seen a lot of stupid comments in my days here at Slashdot, but your comment is one of the fucking stupidest I've ever seen. It's even stupider than those goddamn "cow goes moo" comments. At least they aren't serious. You're serious, and you're apparently too fucking dumb to realize how wrong you are. That's what makes your situation so much more pathetic.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[armanox]

I think most people would consider RHEL 7 and Debian 8 to be stable releases....

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

systemd is in the stable release of Debian. That's why it's such a problem and why so many people are complaining about it!

From https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/:

Debian 8.1 was released June 6th, 2015. Debian 8.0 was initially released on April 26th, 2015.

From the Debian 8 release notes at https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.en.html#systemd:

Introduced in Debian 7, systemd is now the default init system.

Remember, the stable releases of Debian have traditionally not just been stable, but they've been ultra reliable, to the point of even being somewhat outdated they're so robust and unwilling to include anything that hasn't been thoroughly tested.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[jp10558]

And as much as I thought SystemD was stupid and a solution in search of a problem, I much prefer inelegant technical solutions to design decisions that spy on you and segment features based on whether you're "enterprise" enough.

Also, SL7 is as solid for me as 6 so it's basically learning some new stuff unnecessarily. Well, I've given up on *anyone* leaving UIs the hell alone, and systemD seems to be decently backward compatible with init scripts and the service control syntax.

Now that I plan to try very hard to use SL7 as my Win7 replacement desktop OS, I might even find the faster boot times of SystemD vaguely useful.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen... mod this up.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people not understand what stable means in the term 'stable release'? It doesn't mean bug free or only software that doesn't crash. It only means that the software that is in the release remains the same throughout the lifetime of the release. The versions of the software remain the same (except bug fixes), the packages that are available remain the same (never is software added or removed). So when the release comes with OpenOffice 3.x, than that will stay this way for ever. If you want your stable release to have LibreOffice 4.x instead, than you will have to install it without the help of the packet manager, or by pointing to non-stable repositories in the package manager.

But a stable release doesn't mean it is more stable as in bug free than a unstable release. Because unstable release doesn't mean that it is filled with software that is prone to crash. It just means that your software might get an upgrade and that you can't rely on the fact that all libraries and even kernel versions remain the same. So when you develop software, you will always test it on stable releases. If it works with those versions, you don't have to support a moving target and you can just focus on the stable releases instead (which come out every 2 years or so).

Debian 9 can use the most experimental software that is riddled with all kinds of bugs and still call it stable. Because stable has nothing to do how many bugs there are in the software. Of course the Debian team tries its best to only select software where most bugs have been squashed, but that has the side effect that Debian tends to have 'old software'.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason why someone who criticizes systemd in a Windows 10 strategy article is called a troll. It has nothing to do with the article. And the only reason to put it in this article is to troll. This troll only serves one goal, to make Linux look like a bad choice compared to the one true god that is Windows 10.

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[Anonymous Coward]

I repeatedly see the people here who describe the problems they've had with systemd called "trolls".

There is a systematic marketing/PsyOps campaign aimed at discrediting anybody and everybody that dares to criticize the new one true god of systemd. The reason these people are called trolls, are insulted, theri complaints are ignored, etc. is that the systemd proponents actually have very little technological arguments in favor of systemd and none at all for the way it is pushed by force on nearly every Linux user at the moment. At the same time there is a host of convincing technological arguments against systemd, like its immature state, its instable feature set, its violation of a lot of core Unix principles, its inflexibility with regards to kernel versions it can work with, the problems it causes if you want to do something the designers have not anticipated, the unhelpfulness and arrogance of its developers, and outright demented decisions like the binary logs. Hence the proponents of systemd resort to purely emotional arguments because that is all they have. They are then pushing these as hard as they can.

Now, as to why systemd is pushed so hard despite it clearly not being ready for prime-time and it being not the best solution in a lot of scenarios even if it where, that is unclear. One plausible explanation is an "embrace&extend" move by RedHat where they want every Linux installation being dependent in a central place on a piece of software they control. Another is that the NSA and its ilk found Linux far too hard to hack and hence there was the need for a large, complex, network-connected demon that offers a lot of bugs they can then use to compromise systems. And finally, there may be desperate kernel-envy on the side of the chief developer (a known incompetent with a huge ego) who wants to basically wrap the kernel so he can see his own "accomplishments" on the same level as those of Linus.

Mod this AC up to 6. You freaking nailed it, concisely as well.

Binary logs reminds me of hex error codes in Windows event viewer. Dicks? Or just idiots?

And you are right about RedHat. You must be old school. I stopped with RedHat at 7.3. I know many did. It was with 8 that RedHat began to fantasize about money and control like Microsoft and Apple. Subscribe. Buy our support. nah, eat dicks.

systemd is of no use.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-and-others-on-linuxs-systemd/

I refuse/reject any/all RedHat/Fedora. rpm as a package manager is cool, but the distros suck. Will never use again.

https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/810295-the-top-11-best-linux-distros-for-2015

Re: Windows sounds easier to update than Debian.

[ttucker]

And your "just don't upgrade" attitude is fucking idiotic.

Almost as idiotic as the notion that someone is the victim of systemd, or its maintainers. The point is, if you are a neophobe, go all the way.... Use systemd, maintain your own distribution, or use one of the several long term releases that still supports System V or Upstart! At no time are you a victim of anyone besides yourself.

Debian actually isn't much different. Debian's contributors are its users.

Exactly, they don't owe you anything! Canonical and Read Hat don't owe you anything either. You aren't their victims, you are their non-paying end users with a noisy but unpopular opinion.

List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a collage of privacy violations in Windows 10. Is it really an upgrade?

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

I considered installing the tech preview on my main home machine, but then read about some of this stuff awhile back and did not touch it. I did, however, install a couple VMs I'm going to get around to updating to the full version. I updated a couple of laptops around my mother's house as well. Since it was zero cost, and well better than the preloaded mess that was on there...

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG optional features that eiher make things easier or give MS feedback to know how to improve their software! How dare they!

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had actually looked at the image. These are things that are not optional (unless you call upgrading to windows 10 optional), and while there are settings, Microsoft indicates that they well respect these settings only in some situations.
If your company needs to sign NDA's, you can't run Windows 10. GPLv3 is peanuts compared to this.

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single person thinking about upgrading to 10 should be aware of this.

Those things are exactly why I'm not upgrading to 10 and recommending to everybody I know not to either.

And you know this feeds the NSA's bulk data collection.

Re:List of privacy violations

[squiggleslash]

From what I could see, the features that actually invade privacy are optional. The collage was highly misleading, including such things as "Windows Update being mandatory" and "Malware protection only being able to turn off temporarily" as "privacy violations" when they're actually both just things that suck.

Re:List of privacy violations

[ttucker]

If you had actually looked at the image.

I looked at the image. It was a scathing trainwreck of sentence fragments, poorly encoded screenshots, and vitriol.

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

They might be optional, but they are opt-out, meaning most people will no even know they happen.

Re:List of privacy violations

[E-Rock]

Seriously, this is /. and we're flummoxed by having to change a couple default settings to things better for us?

Re:List of privacy violations

[freeze128]

Some of these are just knee-jerk reactions. For example: "Windows defender can be disabled, but after a while it turns itself back on". That is a *GOOD* thing. It protects you, and also prevents you from forgetting to turn it back on - That is something that computers were *MADE* for.... Doing things that are too hard or tedious for a human.

Also, inability to disable auto-updates (Windows home edition only). That's right, you non-patching bastard! The internet is filled with worms like blaster and nimda, and they will never go away because of idiots who don't patch against critical vulnerabilities. Inoculate your children too, you jerk!

Re:List of privacy violations

[jez9999]

And some of them aren't. I don't want MS to be able to access my e-mails or personal data even if they do have a "good faith reason" to do so, thank you. I won't touch Win10 with a barge pole.

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't touch Win10 with a barge pole.

Me either. I was even looking forward to getting a Win 10 phone, until these details came out. In addition, Microsoft slipping in ads for Win10 onto my Win7 machine disguised as an update, made me quite livid. The fact that the new Solitaire "app" on Win10 has ads, that you can't even pay once to make go away but must subscribe to forever, shows that Microsoft is moving to a "pay continuously and forever" model. Fuck you too, Microsoft.

I'll keep my Win7 machine limping along, then probably get a Mac if I have to (Google being the most evil right now, Microsoft trying to regain their evil crown, and Apple too busy changing all the bling to bother making much of their stuff work -- if you have to deal with evil, pick the incompetent evil.)

Re:List of privacy violations

[flappinbooger]

If you had actually looked at the image.

I looked at the image. It was a scathing trainwreck of sentence fragments, poorly encoded screenshots, and vitriol.

so what's the truth? Looking at the graphic I see some "spying" stuff that can be turned off, some spying stuff that can't be turned off, and some crap that will turn itself back on even if you turn it off.

So, what's the truth? What exactly can't be turned off that would be considered "spying"???

I know a guy who thinks that Ubuntu has spyware, and he also thinks win10 has spyware.

Is this like that? An overreaction? Or is this microsoft's attempt to turn into google, only creepier?

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

That for that pile of shit image that looks like Charles Manson put together.

Are you some kind of fucking idiot passing that around?

Re:List of privacy violations

[ttucker]

If you don't trust Microsoft, using Windows is a pretty dangerous proposition, regardless of 7, 8, 8.1, 10. Certain viewpoints would notice that your operating system has various rootkit like properties, when trust is an issue.

My observation is that they are trying to push Microsoft cloud based services on you with difficult to find skip buttons. Not having a live account or at least refusing to type in credentials seems to help a lot! There is a place in setup where they offer, "express settings", which you almost certainly will want to refuse, in order to access several privacy options.

Your guy has a low threshold on spyware. I have a 95% secure way to attain the privacy he seeks... unplug the ethernet cable!

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you do online feeds the NSA's bulk data collection.

Re:List of privacy violations

[jp10558]

I'm moving to Linux. I run a desktop, and I don't need anything that requires me to let any company peruse my data at will for "badness", or injects Ads INTO the OS - that used to be *called* MALWARE.

I already have a crappy annoying spying random upgrading experience in my Android phone, I DO NOT WANT on my desktop.

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, I won't be trying Windows 10 because of SecureBoot. Last time I applied Windows 8 patches, I was locked out of my Linux install (which was on a separate drive! i manually cable only 1 drive at a time depending what I want to run). As a result, I'll never boot into Windows again on my machine.

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think turning those things "off" does anything more than change the appearance of the on screen button (i.e. just make it LOOK like they are off), I have a bridge to sell you.

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what they say, "don't let the door hit you on the way out." Linux sucks as a desktop OS, but at least you'll be "sticking it to the man."

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear paranoid asshole,

Using a Microsoft Account is completely and totally optional with Windows 10. If you don't use Microsoft services, there is no data to send to them. Also, unless you run your own email server, you can guarantee someone is looking at your email.

Re:List of privacy violations

[jez9999]

I do run my own email server.

Re:List of privacy violations

[Raenex]

Unless it's encrypted end-to-end, a 3rd party still has access to your email.

Re:List of privacy violations

[E-Rock]

Does that bridge come with Wireshark logs or just a tinfoil hat?

Re:List of privacy violations

[khellendros1984]

That's right, you non-patching bastard! The internet is filled with worms like blaster and nimda, and they will never go away because of idiots who don't patch against critical vulnerabilities.

Aside from patches that correctly fix legitimate vulnerabilities, Microsoft also has a history of releasing broken updates (and fixing them later when they've already done damage), removing features from their products, releasing "important" updates that are ads for future products, adding annoying new "features" to already-released OSes, and similar behaviors. They aren't the ones that I want as the ultimate gatekeeper of how my computer works.

Aside from that, I'm not going to use any OS that reboots itself without my specific instruction to do so. In terms of security, Windows 10 may be a net gain, taken globally, but at the individual level, it's a step backwards in some ways, and I'm not willing to take that step.

Re:List of privacy violations

[Anonymous Coward]

I was even looking forward to getting a Win 10 phone

Okay, now we *KNOW* you're just trolling. :P

Re:List of privacy violations

[thegarbz]

Or you could just ... you know. ... not enable those features?

I mean it's not like each of them doesn't have an "on/off" switch next to them.

This won't end well....

[beheaderaswp]

Suggestion....

Everyone please wait on this for any seriously important machines. If something goes wrong here- it's going to go very wrong.

And as a reference: "very wrong" does not infer "goodness".

Re:This won't end well....

[jedidiah]

Well, no one with any sense in IT goes anywhere near this close to the bleeding edge. This thing as all things similarly new should be relegated for testing and experimentation.

Although my own personal opinion is that I feel sorry for Windows users...

Re:This won't end well....

[beheaderaswp]

Agreed. Most of my serious stuff is Linux.

I just made the comment because these young guppies haven't seen the carnage we've seen. We've been around.

Re:This won't end well....

[jellomizer]

No one goes on the bleeding edge, often the leading edge for production environments. But it is handy for your personal usage, as well for system testing. As the Leading Edge OS, may become you standard reliable OS.

Re:This won't end well....

[jellomizer]

However... From my experience, the leading edge systems have been getting much MUCH better.
Many of the core stuff has been stabilized for years.

Windows 10 still uses the NT based Kernel. Like the previous versions. Most of the drivers are the same as well. The buggy stuff are in the new features, that are often not yet implemented into the prod environment anyways.

The bad old days of the 1990's seem to be over for now. Quality is much better sense then. We can do a lot of things now without much fear of bad consequences.

Just like in the 1990's we stopped having to worry so much about failure in RAM as a major issue, because RAM has became a rather reliable component on the system.

Re:This won't end well....

[Ol Olsoc]

Agreed. Most of my serious stuff is Linux.

I just made the comment because these young guppies haven't seen the carnage we've seen. We've been around.

Ain't that the troof!

I've stored up a lifetime's worth of nasty Windows memories, with some highlites of them making perfectly good peripherals obsolete, update hell, the removal of employees previously free version of Office, Ribbons, and Windows 8. And so much more! My hatred runs deep.

So I did need to do some Windows 10 support already - not a 10 problem, but that was the guy's OS. So I got W10 installed on a sacrificial computer. Took 4 hours to become proficient enough to not embarrass myself.

And damn - it isn't bad at all. I feel dirty for saying that, but I gotta be honest here. I didn't have one "What the hell?" moment.

I'm beginning to think that some of their arrogant "We'll tell you what you like" attitude might have gone away with the new owner of the LA Clippers.

Re:This won't end well....

[ttucker]

Agreed. Most of my serious stuff is Linux.

serious stuff...

Re:This won't end well....

[Anonymous Coward]

I would generally agree here but this is 2015. I without regrets upgraded two machines knowing it would take all of 20 minutes to recover from it.
The worst thing that happened is i had to go wifi for 2 minutes while I downloaded a network driver. Big deal anyone doing windows installs should know these things anyway.

My data is all backed up and on remote drives. My installs are minimal to the systems usage which in these cases are development tools and game portals I mean this is a desktop upgrade after all, I really don't get this attachment to an operating system people have now and the fear of upgrading them.

Any production system running a desktop upgrade and not capable of rebuilding it's own system requirements already has problems in this day and age. Any desktop user can recover in minimal time and you can use your phone while you wait an hour to check your email.

Re:This won't end well....

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista kernel (NT 6.0) has been the most important turning point. A lot of moldy walls were ripped open and rebuilt. NT6 is what modern Windows largely bases on.

Re:This won't end well....

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. With Vista much of the major driver models have been moved at least partially into user-mode. Audio drivers are entirely user-mode. Video drivers are about 90% user-mode with kernel mode shims. Many other drivers have at least optionally moved into user-mode such as USB and printer drivers. This caused a lot of the initial pain with Vista, but maturity has led to significantly more stability in the OS overall. Windows 10 uses the same exact driver model.

I jumped to Windows 10 the first day. There was some pain, but I worked through it and all is good. None of the issues were the fault of Windows 10 but with hardware, first a new SSD that I tried to use as a boot device that had issues during boot until I applied a BIOS update, then with an old OEM soundcard (SB0770) that incorrectly identifies itself and required some hacked drivers I found in the Creative Labs forums.

Re:This won't end well....

[PRMan]

"No one goes on the bleeding edge, often the leading edge for production environments. "

You obviously haven't worked where I've worked. Even right now I am working on a project where they wrote their own mocking framework for IOC. They couldn't be bothered to wait for one to implement this AWESOME (TM) new idea (that as far as I can see does more harm than good).

Re:This won't end well....

[i.r.id10t]

When you say "Production Environment" that sounds to me like running services with it.

I don't think anyone with half a brain would consider using a desktop OS for a server doing Real Things. A basic dev setup for doing web dev type stuff like LAMP or MEAN while you are traveling, etc - sure no problem. But to put it "out there" and make it available? Hah.

The folks who *should* be getting with it now are the "websmiths" or whatever you want to call those folks that are good at design, layout, using JQuery, etc. so they can start "fixing" their web pages for the new browser Win10 comes with. I know where I work (a college) that will be a big thing for our creative folk, and I know I'm going to need a VM with it (for student support calls related to our LMS) for the new browser as well.

The folks who *will* be getting with it are all those people getting new machines as the new school year starts in a month.

Re:This won't end well....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no plans to downgrade to Win8, much less Win10. I would suggest that those wanting to downgrade wait until Win10 has been out for at least a year before taking the plunge. Early adoption of anything from M$ is never a good idea!

Re:This won't end well....

[Billly Gates]

Others disagree with your assertion of 10.

It is very beta compared to 8.1

Re: This won't end well....

[Anonymous Coward]

So an SSD that works on other machines but needs a hack and patches to work on windows 10 is the hardwares fault? That doesn't sound quite right to me.

Re:This won't end well....

[jellomizer]

However it isn't crashing left and right. There are mostly just a little annoyances.

No problems for me yet

[Higaran]

I've done 2 machines, my surface tablet, which went super easy, the only issue that I noticed was I had to adjust the sensitivity for the pen. I actually like the handwriting recognition alot, I'm still getting used to it a bit, but it's very good. I've also updated a 3 year old lenovo laptop, no problems with that either, both updates went very smooth.

Re:No problems for me yet

[PRMan]

I've done 5-6 machines and all were successful. A 9" 1024x600 netbook, a Zenbook, 2 home built desktops and a MacBook Pro in Parallels. Only two had even one problem. My game machine had a conflict between HDMI drivers (both the motherboard and the video card have HDMI out) and Parallels needed to be upgraded to the latest version. That's it. All in all I've been very impressed.

Firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft OS updates have taken it as a custom to disable all the essential in-build firewall rules for so that after the upgrade there is no 'net for you! Better just create custom rules for DNS, DHCP and the wanted others before the upgrade if running a two-way firewall.

Limited Time....

[jellomizer]

There could be less demand, If we really had a good handle on the limited time to upgrade for free window.
There are a lot of people who are not in a rush to get windows 10. However this limited time means they might as well upgrade now vs waiting too long and having to pay for it. (Yes I am wide open about Free/Open Source Linux advantages...) But is it that important to give an artificial high demand to make investors thinks people really REALLY want the upgrade. vs just Getting it now for Free, vs waiting later for it.

Re:Limited Time....

[LinuxIsGarbage]

There could be less demand, If we really had a good handle on the limited time to upgrade for free window.

We have a good handle, it's one year. From their webpage

Is the upgrade really free?
Yes, it’s free. This is a full version of Windows, not a trial or introductory version. It is available for a limited time: you have until July 29, 2016 to take advantage of this offer. Once you upgrade, you’ll have Windows 10 for free on that device.

I think Microsoft is trying to drum up business by pushing it through WU, have the concept of "reserving" your free upgrade that you have a year to claim.

Just like they did when Windows 7 came out, they want to be able to have numbers that say "Look at how many people upgraded in the first 2 months. This is the most of any version of Windows ever!"

Myself I'm playing with it in a VM, but will probably wait a couple months before upgrading my main OS.

Re:Limited Time....

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has said through June 28, 2016, now I'm not sure if that is 12:01 AM or 11:59pm but that seems like a "good enough handle" to me.

Re:Limited Time....

[__aaclcg7560]

"Look at how many people upgraded in the first 2 months. This is the most of any version of Windows ever!"

The Apple Metric. Good to see Microsoft following standard business practices. ;)

process to upgrade any Windows install

[Anonymous Coward]

Go here or here or here or here.

All have excellent upgrades available to any version of Windows.

Re:process to upgrade any Windows install

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the massive private violations of Win10, those are excellent upgrade options. Too bad you got modded to -1.

Re:process to upgrade any Windows install

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the Microsoft shills are out in force today.

Re:process to upgrade any Windows install

[Anonymous Coward]

I did that and now none of the commercial software we use and need work. Wow! Linux has so much to offer and you're quite a genius to have thought of it!

Re:process to upgrade any Windows install

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember there is no such thing as a free lunch.... or a 'free' copy of Windows.

Re:process to upgrade any Windows install

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is buggy garbage on the desktop.

Re:process to upgrade any Windows install

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather buggy garbage than garbage missing the features you want and containing all of the features that you don't want.

Download in progress

[msobkow]

I'd always planned to burn .isos anyhow, so this is a good option for me. (Yeah, yeah, "USB stick, blah, blah". Why am I going to use a $5 USB stick instead of a $0.50 DVD for something I don't expect to use more than once or twice?)

Re:Download in progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you can overwrite the USB key the second you don't need it anymore? Because you can quickly change the .iso to a seperate one with different updates slipstreamed for testing?

Because it's quicker? Ah fuck it, the truth is I haven't had a CD/DVD drive in two years. Just use a DVD-RW so you can rewrite with a slipstreamed image after a few months.

Re:Download in progress

[msobkow]

Well. After my "holier than thou" comments on cheap DVDs, I ended up having to "burn" my USB stick to do the actual install/upgrade. It turns out my laptop drive isn't DVD-R compatible, only DVD+R. *LOL*

The upgrade itself was painless, though time consuming. It took about 3 hours once I finally had the USB burned. All of my database servers, VLC, etc. seem to work just fine. (Lenovo Z580 with dual-core i7, originally shipped with Windows 7 Home.)

Still drivers issues with the Surface pro.

[Lumpy]

The surface pro and Surface pro 2 BOTH have had non stop issues with wireless drivers for two reasons.

1 - microsoft chose the shittiest wireless chipset made on the planet, the Marvell Avastar 88W8797 Wireless
2 - The drivers were written by drunken morons.

you can easily bork the wireless that require you to delete the device, uninstall the drivers, reboot, re detect and then reinstall the drivers. I was hoping that microsoft had fixed this with windows 10, but nope. it's the exact same crap windows 8 driver that somehow self corrupts it's self on boot up.

It doesn't help that Marvell as a company makes only steaming piles of dog shit. All of their chipsets are complete garbage and any maker that uses them are ran by morons.

Re:Still drivers issues with the Surface pro.

[Anonymous Coward]

All of their chipsets are complete garbage and any maker that uses them are ran by morons.

Maybe they are hiring :)

Re:Still drivers issues with the Surface pro.

[geoskd]

2 - The drivers were written by drunken morons.

That is demeaning to both drunks and morons. I expect an apology is in order.

Re:Still drivers issues with the Surface pro.

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily my Surface Pro isn't bored that badly. I only have to force a restart to fix it, sometimes two. After that it's good until next restart...

Autodesk

[Anonymous Coward]

No Windows at home, and switching at work may take a decade:
In there typical way of fixing bugs, Autodesk just started to send warnings to all there customers, warning that they should NOT upgrade to win10, or bad(TM) things may happen.

Re:Autodesk

[war4peace]

And that's because Windows and not Autodesk how, exactly?

What?

[Ol Olsoc]

As an old tyme Windows hater, I'm not getting some of this. On the 29th I reserved my upgrade. I did a number of updates to get to that point.

Looking at how the update was going to be done, I left the machine on overnight idling.

On the thirtieth, I was notified I was ready, and upgraded. Could not have been easier.

I would have thought that reserving on rollout day would have put me in a long waiting line, and of course there would be a lot of serverhammer (c) on the first few days.

The whole process was flawless, and thank gawdd for that. My original plan was to wait until near the end of the update cycle and see how things were going. Make a decision on staying with 7 or not. But a fellow I was doing some software/hardware troubleshooting with foolishly updated to W10 thinking it would fix his problem, so I needed to know a little about ten before I took remote control of his computer

The results stunned me. Everything just worked. I didn't have to go to the web to figure out simple things like I did in W8. After 4 hours of playing around in it, I was ready to support it. Windows 8 was so nasty, I refused to support it.

Perhaps a Ballmerless company grew some balls here, listened to it's customers, and did it right. Really a tough job taking the steaming pile of shit that was W8, and turning it into something a confirmed Unix like devotee such as myself likes.

There's

Re:What?

[Chewbacon]

I turned down the discounted (or was it free?) Win8 upgrade on a Win7 laptop I bought because I knew it was garbage. I feel less apprehensive about Win10 after seeing so many Youtube videos and reading so many articles. Since I'm on the bottom of the upgrade criteria, still running Windows 7, I feel it is time to upgrade. I'm still weighing out upgrade vs. fresh install. I have a lot of software I don't want to install again and a copy of office 2010 that has reached its activation limit.

Re:What?

[geoskd]

As an old tyme Windows hater, I'm not getting some of this. On the 29th I reserved my upgrade.

Huh? I find it unlikely that anyone who described themselves as a windows hater would upgrade to the latest version of the OS, much less on release day. You can turn in your card at the main office...

Re: What?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, most of us don't have problems adapting to new tech. It's when the new tech is a pile of shit that makes people not want to adapt the new tech. Case in point...windows 8, why use something that is considered a downgrade.

You sir are an idiot if you believe what you typed. This site is filled with highly educated and smart people. They have no problems learning new things(ex: new programming languages crop up all the time). They do have a problem with learning new stuff that doesn't work as good as the old stuff. Upgrading just to upgrade is not a valid option for most of us.

Re:What?

[Ol Olsoc]

As an old tyme Windows hater, I'm not getting some of this. On the 29th I reserved my upgrade.

Huh? I find it unlikely that anyone who described themselves as a windows hater would upgrade to the latest version of the OS, much less on release day. You can turn in your card at the main office...

On a sacrificial computer, and because I had a support task to perform that was on a Windows ten computer. Some times ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Re:What?

[Ol Olsoc]

Fuck you. I had no problems with Windows 8. The problem was, is, and always will be idiots like you who are just not intelligent enough to adapt to even the smallest changes.

IBM mainframes in the 70's

MS-DOS

AmigOS

AmigaDOS

Apple since mid 80s

Windows since 3.1

Vista stunk, and windows 8 damn near killed the desktop industry it was so bad. Others? not too bad. W10 so far? Not too bad at all.

No - sorry, AC. if you cannot see that Windows 8 is a hot steaming pile of shit, Its your lack of intelligence. Not those with the ability and experience to judge it.

Re: What?

[Ol Olsoc]

LOL, most of us don't have problems adapting to new tech. It's when the new tech is a pile of shit that makes people not want to adapt the new tech.

Hopefully he is just trolling. Otherwise dumb as a rock.

Re:What?

[flappinbooger]

As an old tyme Windows hater, I'm not getting some of this. On the 29th I reserved my upgrade.

Huh? I find it unlikely that anyone who described themselves as a windows hater would upgrade to the latest version of the OS, much less on release day. You can turn in your card at the main office...

lets play spot the shill. You scored the first point. Good job!

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What loser.

You hate MS so much, you are willing to make a fool of yourself.

Re:What?

[geoskd]

lets play spot the shill. You scored the first point. Good job!

there seems to be a lot of them out right now. Even NPR had a piece that was so bafflingly one sided that if it wasn't paid for by Microsoft, then NPR got ripped off bad...

Re:What?

[flappinbooger]

lets play spot the shill. You scored the first point. Good job!

there seems to be a lot of them out right now. Even NPR had a piece that was so bafflingly one sided that if it wasn't paid for by Microsoft, then NPR got ripped off bad...

I think they have a nice OS and it did install easily, but so does 7. Is it better than 7? I don't know. I doubt it, but I don't like having the nuts and bolts hidden so much. Maybe it's more user friendly for the low tech users.

They are probably trying to be like Mac OS. Are trying "free" to be more like Google or Linux?

Either way, windows 7 is supported until at least 2020 so I'll probably just stick to that. My concern with 10 is all the BS they have built in for 'gathering information' and 'learn more about you'.

Re:What?

[thegarbz]

The whole process was flawless

I have a Surface 3 Pro, so pretty much the only device that Microsoft can absolutely 100% guarantee to support with a working upgrade process as they know the exact intricacies of the system.

On the 30th I didn't have anything read so I checked the Windows update history logs. There was a LONG list of "Failed" upgrades called "Windows 10 Pro" in the the list.

It didn't go perfectly for everyone. I ended up deleting all the contents of the C:\$windows.BT\ folder and then forcing windows update to download the thing again. It worked flawlessly once I fixed the flaw :-)

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

turning it into something a confirmed Unix like devotee such as myself likes.

Funny you should say that. As a former twm -addict and a fan of the NextStep/OpenStep look I too felt right at home.

Re:What?

[cavebison]

> Perhaps a Ballmerless company grew some balls here, listened to it's customers

Oh you can bet they're listening to you.

Re: What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, you're a simpleton...

Just a detail

[koan]

On my desktop I removed the update that facilitated the upgrade, I will wait and see how things go.
Then possibly purchase the pro version, or enterprise if available to consumers, as it offers more control.

But the detail is, MS doesn't appear to allow updates to virtual machines, I installed the KB 3035583 on the win7 pro virtual machine and nothing, no nag screen, no ability to update.

Re:Just a detail

[Anonymous Coward]

It happened on my W7 machine and I didn't seem to have that particular KB installed. But adding this registry key made the nagging go away:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx] "DisableGwx"=dword:00000001

The Big News not Being Reported

[meadow]

I just upgraded a Thinkpad from Win 8.1 Pro to 10 and the BIG news is that it wiped out many if not most applications. It also took the liberty of deleting shortcuts that I spent a long time creating in my own custom menus, something which is unforgivable. Another thing is that it totally messed up all my Explorer view settings. Many of the folders I had set to list view switched to detailed view. This has been extremely aggravating. Yes, during install it asks you if you want to disable a ton of privacy-compromising features and I recommend to disable ALL of them. It also takes the liberty of installing a bunch of Microsoft apps (again as v.8 did) which I did not ask for nor want, and tries to set them as the defaults. There is an option to customize apps during the initial setup however many of these apps appear to be uninstallable which is like WTF? Also if you hit the Win key to quickly search for an app, Microsoft took the liberty of forcing you to also search through shit on the web and I don't see any easy way to change the search scope to disable that. I'm not impressed with Windows 10 but I may endure it and attempt to grapple with/fix the BS. Just beware when upgrading that it will WIPE many if not most of your apps completely!

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[mister_playboy]

Click on the gear icon within the search box popup and you can turn Cortana and web search off.

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[meadow]

Thank you. FYI I also found out that all the old shortcuts are saved at C:\Windows.old\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\StartMenu The most surprising thing for me was how many apps got removed. I am the kind of person who does not use nor want nearly all of the MS apps that get installed, but I concede that for someone like your mother or neighbor they might be useful. One other disappointment was that the fingerprint reader is not working. This may be at least partially Lenovo's fault since their site only had a Win 8.1 driver but no Win 10 driver but I was thinking that Win 10 was going to handle supporting fingerprint devices on its own. However I cannot find any Biometric option in Control Panel nor any way to access any type of setting related to fingerprint.

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[war4peace]

You have been punished for being dense enough to use Windows Explorer.

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[meadow]

Really? What do you prefer to use for file management? A piece of poo on the end of a stick?

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[war4peace]

Total Commander.

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[meadow]

most recent update April of last year. approaching the stick and poo zone.

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[war4peace]

I don't think you've used Total Commander Ultima Prime, furthermore there's no functionality that Windows Explorer would have and TC wouldn't.
Using TC since ages and frankly Windows Explorer is something I haven't started in months.

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed Total Commander after checking out a couple videos of it on YouTube. It reminds me a lot of a file manager I used with Linux a while back, which I can't recall the name of.

It is a really cool app and its nice that it is highly configurable. The interface does seem a bit dated however and its kind of scary to see mention of Windows XP in the options. I'm going to see how close I can get it to Windows Explorer by configuring it.

Re:The Big News not Being Reported

[meadow]

I just installed Total Commander after checking out a couple videos of it on YouTube. It reminds me a lot of a file manager I used with Linux a while back, which I can't recall the name of. It looks like a port of it. It seems rather crusty unfortunately and the fact that it mentions Windows XP in the settings is scary. I also cannot configure custom column fields to use only fullname and size instead of the highly annoying name and ext fields.

Reserve your copy today!

[freeze128]

I think (this is merely speculation based on my limited experience) that "reserving" your copy of Windows 10 simply takes a profile of your computer hardware (serial numbers, mac address, etc) and sends it to the microsoft licensing servers so that you don't need to enter a Windows 10 product key when you install Win 10 from an ISO.

I performed an in-place upgrade on my Win 7 laptop, and it didn't ask for a key. I then swapped out the Hard Drive with a blank one, and installed Windows 10 clean from CD. It asked for a product key (twice) during setup, but you can choose to skip that. When install was complete, windows was activated! The activation server must have already known about my hardware being properly licensed.

Congratulations, MSFT

[idbeholda]

How does it feel to have wait times longer than Blizzard's last expansion release?

No problems here

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded two machines during the week and had no problems on either. Upgraded an in-place Win 7 machine for one, did a fresh install of Win 8.1 then upgrade to Win 10 from there. The only problem so far is that on the Win 7 machine, which is a laptop, the sound card stopped working for a while. However, a reboot fixed it, so I'm assuming there was an update at some point.
Otherwise it's been a pretty smooth experience for me personally.

When to upgrade?

[Rich0]

So, my sense is that Windows 10 is the "odd-numbered" version that I'll eventually end up upgrading to. Right now I do most of my serious stuff on linux, and maintain a decent windows 7 PC mainly for gaming purposes (since I still have many games that are not linux-compatible). I tend to view my windows PC more like a gaming console as a result.

So, when is the right time to upgrade? I suspect that it will be once DirectX 12 is available, stable, and in some kind of use. At the very least I'll want to wait until the rumor mill indicates that my graphics drivers (Radeon) are reasonably stable on Win10.

I'm also torn on whether to upgrade in place or just wipe and reinstall (especially since I'm still running my OS from the non-SSD drive in the system). Is installing Win10 from scratch supported, and free?

My guess is that it will be at least a few months before I'll be upgrading...

Re:When to upgrade?

[guacamole]

Everyone recommends to do an upgrade in place so that Microsoft will activate your Win 10 license. Once you have confirmed that the Win 10 key is active, you can than wipe and reinstall, this time from scratch. Even if you do a clean install, the installer might save your entire old setup in C:\Windows.old and I haven't figured out how to force the installer to format the drive without making a backup of the old system.

Otherwise, it seems like a normal OS once your disable about two dozen major privacy and security risks such as Wi-Fi sense, as well as about a dozen of services and apps that collect all information about you and send it to microsoft.

You need CMPXCHG16b, PrefetchW, and LAHF/SAHF.

[Anonymous Coward]

Check here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

This means you can use older AMD but not old Intel 64-bit CPUs.

Something happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately I'm one of ones who got hit with the "something happened" error. I tried everything I could think of, including the suggestion online to change the system locale (which was already correct). I created a new administrator account, disabled all unnecessary services, installed updates first, and so on. I ended backing up everything and doing a clean install of Windows 8.1, which finally allowed the upgrade to complete. I run Linux on most of my computers but recently got gifted a 2-in-1 ThinkPad, and Windows 10 allows me to actually use the device as a tablet and feels a lot more polished than Windows 8 did.

Buggy as hell. No rush

[Billly Gates]

Do not bother upgrading folks if what you have works fine unless you have a pyschotic episode with the flat look of 8.1 and can't find classic start.

There are many many bugs. Items do not fill in properly in menus. Adhock wifi not available, disjointed tiles in TV and music, Edge crashing, Edge having no extensions, poor battery life on the surface pro 3, One drive not having placeholders, Grove not having select all on playlists, .NET 4.6 JIT tail bug where arguments get scrambled, and many many others in just the first few days reported

This reminds me 0f XP. Yes, XP pre - SP1. XP was not considered God by users and IT departments in 2001. It was buggy and had compatibility and network probloems before SP1 and SP 2 was where it finally got somewhat solid.

Windows 10 has an unfinished and baked feel. It won't touch my systems until Redstone update 1 something later this fall ... or maybe next summer as I see it more as just hittting beta now as MS rushed this.

Anecdotal browser slowdown

[indytx]

I know that I am a cohort of one, but I installed 10 on a single office laptop, and it seems as if Firefox an Chrome are both noticeably slower at rendering pages than they were with 8.1. I've tried restarting the laptop, and that seemed to help a small bit, but not much. Chrome just crashed on me a minute ago while trying to load Google News. Chrome is stock, and on Firefox, I'm running NoScript, Flashblock, and Ghostery, and it's just crazy slow. When clicking on a link to read a simple news story, the images are loading like dial up. This is not happening on our other laptops and tablets, so I think it's specific to the laptop and not to my internet connection.

To activate, you MUST upgrade not clean install

[Fencepost]

I downloaded and created a 64-bit install DVD for a test system which had Windows 7 Pro 32-bit because I was planning to switch it over to 64-bit anyway. Obviously this requires a clean install.

Turns out that to activate, you MUST do the upgrade from an activated Windows 7/8/8.1. Apparently that will register the hardware signature for the activated Windows 10 on Microsoft's servers. After you've upgraded to Windows 10 that way, you can then go back and do a clean install if desired - because that hardware signature is known it'll activate on its own after the clean install, or at least that's how I found it described.

I was just glad that I had the Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit ISO handy - I ended up reinstalling that, activating (had to call in, when they offer you the smartphone option, TAKE IT), never even installing updates, then installing the upgrade immediately.

$Windows.~BT

[Ark42]

Why do I have a 6.55GB $Windows.~BT folder if it won't let me upgrade yet? If it already downloaded everything at some point, shouldn't the install just start? Why stagger the installs and not the downloads? I thought the point was to not hammer the servers with lots of downloads at once...

Re:$Windows.~BT

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I have a 6.55GB $Windows.~BT folder if it won't let me upgrade yet? If it already downloaded everything at some point, shouldn't the install just start? Why stagger the installs and not the downloads? I thought the point was to not hammer the servers with lots of downloads at once...

I have this too. Has there been any progress for you?

Re:$Windows.~BT

[Anonymous Coward]

The upgrade finally became available the other day. Guessing ~BT meant BitTorrent so maybe it had to wait until enough data was verified and complete before it could start. Now that folder is only 4GB after the upgrade but I have a 30GB Windows.old folder just taking up space.

So here's my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 in itself is a stable upgrade. It was able to install in all 3 of my PC's fine. The problem I had was it did not support my peripherals like a mobile scanner from Brother. In fact Brother pretty much washed away any hope of ever supporting Windows 10 with my scanner. Even though Microsoft own compatibility search said that model supported Windows 10 and then proceeded to give me a link to Brother's download site. Which then said, nay, nay to any support. I then had some issues with the WiFi sense and WiFi connection issues. Neither HP or Microsoft update had a WiFi driver that fixed the problem.
So for me, it was back to Windows 8.1 on two PC's and Windows 7 Sp1 on another. Sorry Microsoft but I have rather bland and typical hardware that is less that two years old. If I am having problems, I can only imagine others are too. I guess I'll wait to see if the bugs get worked out before trying again.

WSUS reports windows 10 as Vista when will MS fix

[Joe_Dragon]

WSUS reports windows 10 as Vista when will MS fix that?

Could have learned from the open source world

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of relying on a few servers in Redmond, they could have learned from the open source world and had multiple (dozens) of download sites worldwide. Even better would be (and I know a lot of people are frightened by this), using torrents to download. I've been using torrents to download Linux systems for years. "Isn't that torrent stuff illegal?!?!?" NO! No, its not. The technology is not illegal. The content you download with it *might* infringe on someone's copyright (depends on the content), but the Linux software ecosystem is open source, covered by the GPL license, and so sharing *IS LEGAL*, and not just "kinda sorta" legal, but "ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY BACKED UP BY LAWYERS LEGAL!" The medium is fair game. Occasionally newbie media organizations might try to bellyache about people using torrents for distributing legal content, but they can go push a rope because the technology isn't illegal, and the content isn't illegal. It would have been faster and cheaper for microsoft to use this technology.

I upgraded to Mint 17.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Any math student can see that 17.2 is greater than 10 and more than double 8.

windows 10 upgrade

[davell logan]

Free how can you beat that.....

Microsoft account required for Cortana

[Tony Isaac]

In order to use Cortana, you have to switch your Windows login to be your Microsoft account. No, thanks! I have no intention of changing my desktop login to be my Microsoft account. Cortana will have to wait.

There's?

[antdude]

I think your W10 upgrade failed. ;)

Wi-Fi Sense

[bradley13]

Of all of these data-sharing policies, Wi-Fi Sense is the craziest. How many places out there share their Wi-Fi passwords with selected people? Microsoft makes no effort to get the Wi-Fi owner's permission to share a password.

If one visitor has W10 and 100 contacts, and each of those 100 contacts has another 100 contacts, and each of those... It's not clear just how the password will propagate, but it could well be that sharing with a single W10 use essentially makes the password public. This is not why we set passwords on our Wi-Fi networks.

Re:Wi-Fi Sense

[guacamole]

Actually, supposedly Wi-Fi sense will not share the passwords with the contacts of the contacts. Notheless, it's a major legal and security disaster waiting to happen.

I can no longer trust any guest with my wi-fi passwords because I don't want hundreds of people, who I may or may not know have access to the heart of my LAN. All those independent coffee shops with WLAN secured by a single password will have their Wi-Fi leached by people who are not customers. If not careful, one could also leak with Wi-Fi sense a password from a work network to the contacts. What a disaster waiting to happen. I think Microsoft will be eventually sued by somebody for doing this.

Re:Wi-Fi Sense

[guacamole]

And the problem is not just with _guests_. If I want my family member's laptop to be on the regular WLAN with me, I would have to make sure, if they use Windows 10, that this Wi-Fi sense BS is turned off. Of course, one day I will not be around when my uncle visits my place, he gets the password, and then suddenly all his facebook buddies have access to my WLAN.

There can be something like a million ways to exploit this issue in a million of inane ways. Want to snoop around on your ex's WLAN? Check what goodies you can find: unsecured PCs, SMB shares, or streaming servers? Well, now you can! All you need is to be a facebook friend with one of her friends who happened to have WLAN access. The possibilities are insane. It's not just a loss of privacy. It's a loss of home LAN security thanks to microsoft.

I think everybody will have to rethink their WLAN security because of Microsoft. For one, having a special "guest" network might be necessary, but that won't prevent your uncles and game-night buddies connecting to the main WLAN from sharing your WLAN access with everyone..

Two days spent trying to upgrade..

[guacamole]

I have been trying to update from Windows 7 using the MediaCreation tool method. The direct update never worked for me. At some point, it would crash and close down, sometimes in the middle of download, or sometimes in the middle of verifying media, etc. No useful errors. What did work was to use the MediaCreation tool to download an ISO image of the OS. Burn it on a DVD, then unpack everything back on my desktop (not sure if this last setup is necessary), and then run the setup.exe from there.

1 Windows key for all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone else noticed that when you upgrade to Windows 10 with the Media Creation Tool that your installation is activated by the same key on all computers?
After upgrading, I installed Belarc Advisor to retrieve my new Windows 10 key for each computer I upgraded. I discovered every upgrade used the same key ending in 3V66T. A couple other people that upgraded home machines also got this same key. My guess is this is Microsoft's "free" key and come July 28, 2016 it will not be a key you can activate to get your "free" upgrade. Anyone know what is going on?

Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux software is free but only if your time is worthless.

going back to paper and pen

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw it! i think the Amish may have been on to something. With the parasitic and voyeuristic climate in business and governmentsall trying to monetize you and your information.

I want to go line in a cave with a faraway cage and a copper foil hat. Sorrry Alcoa, aluminum doesn't work.

Just need to figure out how to get my amazon packages and PeaPod deliveries.

gweihir tries to discredit me? He ran... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" vs. a fair challenge http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> Keep on shooting your blowhard done nothing in computing mouth off gweihir - I'll be RIGHT THERE AGAIN to expose your crap yet again (have fun with the shame you'll have to publicly endure here & YOU STARTED IT WITH ME YOU USELESS TROLLING LOSER WITH NO SKILLS BUT LOTS OF MERE "TALK", lmao)... apk