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

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

[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.

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 !

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.

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]

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

[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

[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.

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....

[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.

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: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.

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: 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.