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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems Upgrades IT

Windows 10 Upgrade Strategies, Pitfalls and Fixes As MSFT Servers Are Hit Hard 187

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

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  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @07:36AM (#50228911)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by LinuxIsGarbage ( 1658307 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @08:12AM (#50228997)

      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.

    • by ewhenn ( 647989 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @08:18AM (#50229015)
      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... [pcworld.com]
      • by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        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 t

    • 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...

      • by ttucker ( 2884057 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @09:06AM (#50229165)

        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.

        • 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.

          • 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.

            • 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.

              • 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.

      • Are you using VirtualBox 5? They added support for a bunch of instructions.
  • by invictusvoyd ( 3546069 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @07:36AM (#50228913)

    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 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01, 2015 @07:39AM (#50228923)

    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.

    • 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.

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

    • 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!

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01, 2015 @07:43AM (#50228935)

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

  • by beheaderaswp ( 549877 ) * on Saturday August 01, 2015 @07:48AM (#50228941)

    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".

    • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      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...

      • 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.

        • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @08:18AM (#50229021)

          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: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

          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.

          An

        • Agreed. Most of my serious stuff is Linux.

          serious stuff...

      • 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.

        • by PRMan ( 959735 )

          "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).

        • 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

  • by Higaran ( 835598 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @07:57AM (#50228959)
    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.
    • by PRMan ( 959735 )
      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.
  • 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 wai

    • Re:Limited Time.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by LinuxIsGarbage ( 1658307 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @08:24AM (#50229039)

      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 [microsoft.com]

      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.

      • "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. ;)

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Go here [kubuntu.org] or here [linuxmint.com] or here [debian.org] or here [opensuse.org].

    All have excellent upgrades available to any version of Windows.

  • 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?)

    • by msobkow ( 48369 )

      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.)

  • 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 drive

  • What? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @08:34AM (#50229075)
    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

    • 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.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • 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.

      • 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!

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • 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 a

    • 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
    • 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

    • I think your W10 upgrade failed. ;)

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

      Oh you can bet they're listening to you [imgur.com].

  • 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 wa

    • 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

  • 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 [neowin.net]. 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

  • 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 im
  • 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
  • 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...

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

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Saturday August 01, 2015 @10:41PM (#50232167) Homepage

    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.

  • 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

    • 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 se

      • 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 good

  • 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.

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